These aren’t her real categories or real numbers, but you get the idea.

Before: Reading Numbers

Her “before” version looked something like this:

She had small n’s — a unique situation!

My definition of a “small” number is less than 100 — an arbitrary cut-off point that I learned from a past supervisor, and I’ve stuck with for years.

Not only was the total under 100, but each of the cells was under 100, too.

After: Skimming Visuals

There are several ways to bring the table to life.

During a 1:1 consultation, we talked through a few ideas together.

Idea 1: Heat Table

This easy visual — made via Excel’s Conditional Formatting — would be a great addition to the appendix.

If you’re familiar with the 30-3-1 approach to reporting, then you know I put allllll the tables in the appendix.

In other words, I aim for zero or few tables within the body of the report. The report’s body should focus on key findings with graphs, not dilute the data with eeeeeeverything in a table.

Idea 2: Clustered Columns

This is Ann K. Emery’s least favorite chart of all time. I’ll never let any of my students use one of these bad graphs!!!!

It’s the default option — we simply highlight the summary table in Excel, and insert a chart — and we get this lazy chart.

There’s too much going on, so it doesn’t tell us anything.

The color-coding by category is off.

There’s a separate legend, which is an accessibility no-no.

Idea 3: Small Multiples Histograms

With a re-orientation and re-coloring, it’s easy to build small multiples histograms.

But, the vertical columns didn’t fit her portrait Word doc:

The horizontal bars would be totally fine.

My only hesitation was that bar charts are… boring.

I’ll never let my students have only bar charts in their reports, slides, dashboards, or infographics. Our viewers deserve variety.

Plus, this was a unique small n situation. Let’s capitalize on that!

Idea 4: Icon Arrays

To bring the small n to life, we tried an icon array.

The student liked this option because:

• It’s very, very, very fast to create — much faster than creating and formatting a chart.
• It was similar to her original table — the same rows and columns.
• Right away, she could see how much bigger Category A was than the other categories.

Yes, I realize the irony…

I just wrote a blog post asking you to humanize your data with realistic people icons, which would be a step above shapes like circles and squares.

We tried realistic people icons, too.

They look fine close-up.

But they simply didn’t fit. In other words, there would have to be fewer icons, and/or they’d have to be much larger, to even be legible.

They just look like chicken scratch, sigh.

Behind the Scenes

I’ve written and spoken about symbol fonts a million times.

Webdings, StateFace, and WeePeople are personal favorites.

Yep, these are simply Webdings n’s!

Never, ever add a bajillion individual circles to your Word doc or PowerPoint slide. What a waste of our own time. Just use symbol fonts.

Made Within Minutes

Can you type n’s into your table?

And change the font into Webdings?

Even if you’re the slowest typer in the world… I promise it won’t take long to type some n’s.

Then, simply adjust the font colors, so that you’re using one brand color per category.

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to see the Excel file and Word doc used in the blog post? Download them here.

The post How to Visualize Small n’s with Icon Arrays appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Researchers, evaluators, and scientists complete my online courses. Or they bring me in for private workshops.

And they start applying what they learned. GREAT!!!

But it’s a little off. OOPS.

This is entirely my fault. I’ve been recommending that we use icons for years now — but I haven’t been clear enough about how to use them, and how not to use them.

In this blog post, you’ll see 8 different types of icon use. The good, bad, and ugly.

(1) Multi-Color 1990s-Era Clip-Art: NOOOOOOOO

Let’s start with what not to do: clip-art.

Icons and clip-art are similar, but not identical.

Icons use one color, so they hold up well in grayscale printing, or when very small.

Clip-art uses several colors, so it doesn’t hold up well in grayscale printing, and it’s hard to see when it’s small.

For these obvious reasons — clip-art is outdated and hard to see — clip-art gets The Big Red X.

(2) Cheesy, Posed Stock Photography: NOOOOOOOO

Gosh, I hope this one’s obvious.

I love adding photographs to reports, slideshows, and infographics.

But not the cheesy, posed type, like this.

Another Big Red X.

(3) One-Color Icons to Replace Words: NOOOOOOOO

One-color icons are okay.

But icons can only accompany words, not replace words.

(4) Icons to Accompany Words: Yes!

Let’s start by adding words: males and females.

Then, we’ll turn those choppy phrases into full sentences to remove guesswork.

We’ll bold a few key words to make it more skimmable.

We’ll color-code the keywords to match the icons (blue keywords for blue icons).

Finally, we’ll color-code by category: blue for one group, and green for another. You’d obviously use your brand colors, not mine, but the technique is the same: one hue per category.

Even if you’re the slowest typer in the world, these bare-minimum edits should only take a minute.

(5) Icons to Categorize: Yes!

Next, let’s add some actual, ya know, graphs.

Bar charts are fine, but they’re super boring if that’s all we have.

These are binary variables — a.k.a. yes/no variables — so two-slice pies are perfectly fine.

(Here’s my list of pie chart guidelines if you’re not familiar with my stance on pies.)

This is where we can add icons to categorize.

You see the difference, right?

I’m not a fan of using icons on their own, like the previous examples. They feel overly-simplistic and dumbed-down. But I am a fan of using icons to accompany other graphs, and to aid with categorization, like this:

We’re not limited to pies for binary variables.

We could use pies, donuts, or square pies.

No matter the graph type, the icon usage is the same: They’re accompanying the graphs, and aid with categorization.

(6) Icons to Show Proportions: Yes!

We can also use icons as the visualization itself.

Collages of icons are called icon arrays. The square version is also known as a waffle chart.

For bonus points, we could add the male/female icons to aid with categorization, too.

You see the distinction, right? The primary icons (the collages of squares or circles) are used to visualize the data, not just decorate it.

(7) Overly-Simplistic Icons to Humanize: NOOOOOOOO

The only thing worse than one dumbed-down Gingerbread Person is a hundred of them.

NO MORE GINGERBREAD PEOPLE!!!

(8) Realistic Icons to Humanize: Yes!

I am a fan of using realistic icons to humanize the data.

You see the differences, right? We’re not using single icons just to decorate, like the first couple examples. We’re using icons to categorize and/or to show proportions.

And we’re not using dumbed-down Gingerbread People. We’re using realistic human silhouettes.

More Examples of Realistic Icons to Humanize

I want to normalize these realistic icons for you. Here are a couple examples from the wild:

• The proportion of female chairs in board or CEO positions in German companies
• COVID-19 won’t spread as easily when Oregon reaches herd immunity

Using Smaller Denominators

All icons — squares, circles, Gingerbread People, and realistic human icons — get tricky to read when they’re tiny.

In some projects, we can simplify our fractions.

I tried changing 42% of men to 42 of 100 men, and then to 21 of 50 men. That worked fine!

But when I tried changing 37% of women to 37 of 100 women, and then to 18.5 of 50 women… yuck. If our unit of analysis is people, we can’t talk about or visualize half a person. That’s confusing to our audiences.

So while I’d prefer to simplify the fraction, I can’t in this specific example.

Traditional and Storytelling Versions

Hopefully you’ve heard me talk about traditional vs. storytelling graphs before. If not, you can watch this video for a quick overview. Both versions are correct, but they’re correct for different types of audiences.

The Bottom Line

There are several different ways to use icons in data visualization, and some are better than others.

I don’t recommend clip-art (version 1) or cheesy stock photos (version 2).

I don’t recommend icons to replace words (version 3).

I don’t even recommend icons on their own (version 4).

Instead, at a bare minimum, we should be using icons to accompany other graphs and to categorize (version 5).

Better yet, I’d prefer that we use icons (like little squares or circles) to show proportions (version 6).

And when our unit of analysis is humans, I’d prefer that we use realistic human icons (version 8) and never the dumbed-down Gingerbread People (version 7).

Your Turn

Which version of icons are you currently using? Which one might you try in the future? Comment below with all your ideas! Bonus points for sharing links to your public-facing projects so we can learn from each other.

The post Use Icons to Visualize Data, Not Just Decorate appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Beyond Graphs 1: I made a Great Graph after just a Few Course Modules

Soon after the course started, I brought Ann data about who connected with me on LinkedIn after I was listed as one of Nick Martin’s 9 Amazing Humans to Follow. Nick has a HUGE network and I got over 69 connection requests in the first day. And requests continued for more than a week!

So I made a graph to go with a post on LinkedIn, applying all the learnings from the first few course modules.

Beyond Graphs 2: 2 Things I Learned in 10 Minutes of Help in 1 Office Hour Session

I examined the few data variables on the LinkedIn connection requests. My impression was validated. Only 2 of 136 requests had a personalized message (despite LinkedIn experts emphasizing the need to personalize connection messages).

I tried different ways to display this finding (waffle chart, pie chart, and this one). Luckily, Office Hours were the next day. (Office Hours are a CAN’T MISS opportunity for immediate feedback!)

Ann took one look and exclaimed, “Ooh, let’s try the WeePeople font!” (Well, maybe not exactly like that!)

She then quickly used WeePeople to show the data.

Learning 1: More relevant and representative visuals with icons showing diverse silhouettes

(Hooray – No more using just the standard male icon.)

And then Ann taught us all how to make a gif which was even more effective at telling the “only 2 of 136 people” story.

Learning 2: Using a gif can give readers a quick result from your data

And, for those who follow LinkedIn stats to see how their posts engage, the post with the bar graph got 4,765 impressions and the 2^nd post (the next day) with the gif got 8,778 impressions!

Beyond Graphs 3: Now I’m Applying a Mental Checklist to Graphs and Charts

No – not only to the few graphs I’m making.

The course taught me and heightened my awareness to look at all the visual elements in the many graphics we see each day. There was so much learning from the course modules. And then many great opportunities in Office Hours to learn from what others were working on.

Here are things I find I am automatically looking for in these graphics:

• Color choice(s)
• Is it a Traditional or Storytelling title?
• The clarity of the data message
• Is the graph or chart the best for that message and the data being used?
• What elements could be removed for better clarity?

And a Beyond Graphs Bonus: Consistency and Efficiency

I consider myself a digital pioneer. But I didn’t know what I didn’t know, even being a longtime Word, PowerPoint, and Excel user.

I jumped into the course, and my efficiency increased in the first week! The course started – not with graphs – with ensuring basics including branding by setting my color and font defaults.

And then, a couple weeks later, I set up branding for a 3-part seminar series I did for Waey, the Association for Community Health in Saudi Arabia.

And I now have the consistency across Excel, Word, and PowerPoint and across my different PCs. What a difference!

This is just the tip of the iceberg of everything I am doing differently after Great Graphs – Excel!

Connect with Sue Griffey

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suegriffey/

Twitter: @SueMentors

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-rjWX4ZmTdo0S3ssKbut_A

SueMentors Resources: https://suegriffey.fyi.to/suementors-resources-for-your-professional-presence

A no-cost short course: Build and Update Your Professional Presence in 4 Steps at this page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/4-steps-to-build-update-your-professional-presence

The post When a Course is More Than a Course: 3 Ways “Great Graphs in Excel” Was Beyond Graphs appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from workshop participants.

Bill Gates, are you reading this??

Microsoft Excel is lonnnnng overdue for some updates.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s still my favorite program. With 750 million users worldwide, I won’t be switching to anything else. It’s used by every business professional I know for at least part of their workflow.

Earlier this week, I was invited to guest lecture at Baruch College. Thanks to Professor Mahmoud Kamal Ahmadi for inviting me!

I’m normally very zen about data visualization. I expected to bring that peace of mind to Professor Ahmadi’s students.

Here’s my calm before the storm selfie:

“Sure, some of Excel’s default formatting is hard to decipher. And isn’t accessible for people with disabilities,” I’ve said a million times. “But with some behind-the-scenes editing, we can still make powerful visualizations inside Excel.”

I’m getting tired of making excuses for Microsoft.

Shouldn’t they know better by now??

I started to teach the Baruch College students about exploratory data visualization with conditional formatting. I couldn’t help but rant about the bad formatting as I went. It was 8pm at night. My filter had disappeared; I couldn’t help it. Sorry not sorry, Microsoft.

Wait, What’s Conditional Formatting??

Conditional Formatting is a fancy way of saying “if-then visuals.”

If the number is above 50, then fill the cell with red.

If the number is below average, make the font bold.

On and on.

Conditional Formatting is Ann K. Emery’s favorite button in Excel (along with the pivot tables button). It’s hiding in plain sight on our Home tab.

How to Use Conditional Formatting in Microsoft Excel

Conditional Formatting lets us create near-instant visuals.

These visuals are helpful for both exploratory and explanatory purposes. Exploratory data visualization is for us, the spreadsheet users and graph-makers. These near-instant visuals help us uncover patterns. Explanatory data visualization is typically for others, like our supervisor, Board of Directors, or other stakeholder groups. These near-instant visuals can be shared with others inside of dashboards, scorecards, and one-pagers to explain key findings to our audiences.

Here’s how to use Conditional Formatting in Microsoft Excel:

1. Highlight or select some of the values in your spreadsheet. You can use Conditional Formatting on numbers, percentages, currency, and even words.
2. Go to the Home tab.
3. Click on the Conditional Formatting button.
4. Choose one of the options, like Highlight Cells Rules, Top/Bottom Rules, or Data Bars.
5. Enjoy your near-instant visual!
6. Edit edit edit. With the cells still selected, go back to the Conditional Formatting button. On the very bottom of the list, you’ll see an option for Manage Rules. This is a fancy way of saying edit. You can adjust most aspects of your visual: the colors, the cutoff values, more.

Conditional Formatting in Microsoft Excel that Should Be Retired ASAP

Conditional Formatting is mostly excellent.

I love the speed. I love the instant understanding I get by seeing my numbers come to life.

But I hate hate hate the ableism.

Some of the Conditional Formatting options are terrible for people with color vision deficiencies.

Others are terrible for grayscale printing. (When was the last time you got excited about paying for colored ink cartridges?)

Others are just terribly busy-looking and could easily be improved with Graphic Design 101 skills.

Here are 24 of Excel’s conditional formatting techniques that should be retired ASAP.

These visuals are:

• too time-consuming to read,
• not accessible, or
• look like they’re from 1995.

3 Arrows (Colored)

Nice try, but so busy. I’ll show you something better in a moment.

3 Triangles

A bit easier to skim, but we can do better.

4 Arrows (Colored)

Why do the yellow arrows point in two different directions?

3 Arrows (Gray)

4 Arrows (Gray)

5 Arrows (Gray)

There’s nothing useful here. Don’t make me write three different sentences about why these three options are worthless.

3 Traffic Lights (Unrimmed)

I’m about to become really unpopular with 99% of people who make business dashboards, but….

We should really stop using traffic light color-coding altogether.

Green-red color combos aren’t accessible for people with color vision deficiencies (more on this later).

Sure, red-green combos are intuitive. For those of us who can see them. But they’re useless for everyone else.

3 Traffic Lights (Rimmed)

Let’s make the colors even smaller and harder to see.

Red to Black

These tones are confusing to me. Don’t we associate both red and black as “bad” colors? Why is red = high percentages? And black = low percentages? Sure, Excel lets us flip-flop these colors, but the question remains—aren’t red and black both “bad?”

4 Traffic Lights

Now, Excel is saying that black is even worse than red?? These inconsistencies kill me. And since when do traffic lights have 4 different colors? I’ve never seen a black lightbulb in a traffic light. So more for intuitive traffic light coding.

3 Signs

I want to love these. Although the 3 Signs design would technically pass 508 compliance accessibility guidelines (because our viewers aren’t relying on color alone—they can also see the different shapes) it’s still so busy.

There’s also the issue of combining both categorical coding (a diamond vs. triangle vs. circle) with diverging coding (red is worst, yellow is medium, green is best). Forgive the jargon, but as a research methods geek, this bothers me.

3 Symbols (Circled)

These tiny symbols would be impossible to skim at a glance in a tiny spreadsheet.

3 Flags

GAH. Probably the hardest to read from this bunch.

3 Symbols (Uncircled)

Maybe the easiest to skim from this bunch? But still a bit busy.

3 Stars

This design gets creativity points.

5 Quarters

These aren’t so bad to skim right now—because I’ve already organized the spreadsheet from lowest to highest. Imagine a mismatched list (e.g., 20%, then 80%, then 10%, then 50%….). It would get messy.

5 Boxes

There could be more contrast between the gray and blue, i.e., it would be easier to read if the gray was a bit lighter, or the blue a bit darker.

4 Ratings

I actually love bar and column charts for at-a-glance findings.

But, these would be easier to read if they were horizontal bar charts, not vertical column charts.

I’ll show you an example with horizontal bars in a moment.

5 Ratings

Same shortcomings here.

Data Bars (Gradient)

Speaking of bar and column charts… Do you see how much easier it is to compare bars than columns?

BUT, not these gradient bars. We need to retire these. The most important part of the bar chart is the right-most endpoint. So why does Microsoft fade these out to lighter colors… therefore making the most important thing harder to see???

Data Bars (Solid)

Winner winner chicken dinner! More of these, please.

Green-Yellow Red Color Scales

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. This stoplight coding is intuitive.

But only for those of us who can see red and green as distinct colors. For people with color vision deficiencies, this color scheme is worthless.

Let’s retire this ableist color scale from Excel.

Green-White-Red Color Scales

Not accessible. Ableist.

Blue-White-Red Color Scales

Better than the red-green color coding, since at least it’s legible for people with color vision deficiencies.

But, this wouldn’t print well in grayscale. More on this in a moment.

Green-Yellow Color Scale

Not horrible… but not as clear as it could be.

Green-White Color Scale

Winner winner chicken dinner! More of these, please.

Look at the green-yellow and green-white options next to each other.

Do you see how the green-white color scale is easier to read? The white is, well, whiter than the yellow. Therefore, there’s even more contrast when compared to the green.

This scale is colorblind-friendly and grayscale-friendly.

Red-White Color Scale

Winner winner chicken dinner! More of these, please.

This is the opposite tone of the green-white color scale.

In other words, use this color scale to emphasize that low = bad.

How about Grayscale Printing?

We should always assume that someone will print our visuals. That printing may happen in grayscale, not full color, to save money.

I did a quick grayscale test on these color scales to show you what they’d look like.

Do you see how the first three are worthless? The fourth one, green-yellow, is okay. The last two are the easiest to read.

(In Dataviz Jargon: Transform that diverging scale into a sequential scale. It’s harder to notice differences between two different hues, like red and blue, than to notice differences between gradations, like light green vs. dark green. And it’s impossible to read diverging scales in grayscale.)

How about Color Vision Deficiencies?

I also did a color-blindness check.

First, I uploaded a screenshot to the Color Vision Deficiency Simulator website.

Next, I investigated what the color scales would look like for someone with protanopia. Eek.

The first four are worthless.

Green-yellow is okay.

Green-white and red-white are best.

Well-Formatted Conditional Formatting in Microsoft Excel Worth Keeping

Keeping score? Here are the conditional formatting visuals we can keep using:

• Green-White Color Scale
• Red-White Color Scale
• Data Bars

I’ll add another keeper to the list: Squares and circles made with the Webdings symbol font.

For example, we can use Webdings g’s and the rept() function to create an icon array, as shown above.

Or, we can use Webdings g’s and c’s to create a series of filled-unfilled squares.

Or, we can use Webdings n’s to create a series of light-dark circles.

It’s faster to skim a list of filled-unfilled squares, or light-dark circles, than to skim the stars, flags, or mini column charts shown earlier.

How to Add Conditional Formatting to Your Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet

Want to create conditional formatting to explore initial patterns in your spreadsheet? Here are links to detailed tutorials:

• How to Create Data Bars in Microsoft Excel
• How to Make a Heat Table in Microsoft Excel
• More examples of easy-to-skim symbols and icons made with symbol fonts (Webdings and Wingdings)
• Webdings example: Re-envisioning a University’s Monthly Report: Two Reports with Two Different Purposes      
• Webdings example: Visualizing Your Annual Survey Results: Four Makeovers That Didn’t Work, and the Fifth That Did

Your Turn

What are some additional features of Excel that should be retired? Or added?

The post 24 Conditional Formatting Visuals in Microsoft Excel that Should Be Retired appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

The default: The data just sits there inside a Dusty Shelf Report.  

But what if your data could actually inform real-life decisions?  

I recently sat down with Vivian Jefferson from Loudoun County Public Schools, a growing district in the Washington, D.C. metro area.   

Vivian and I are both members of the same Facebook group (a community for everyone taking data visualization training with me).  

A couple weeks ago, Vivian mentioned that her graphs had been featured on the news (!!!).  

The topic was school reopening plans for the 2020-2021 academic year. Vivian and her colleagues had collected surveys from parents and teachers to gauge their opinions.  

Watch the Conversation Below 

Vivian and I talked about the 52,000 surveys that her office designed, administered, cleaned, and visualized within a two-week timeframe.  

She’ll teach you how they visualized the data, making sure to have detailed reports for technical audiences and a storytelling slideshow for a school board meeting with hundreds of attendees.  

And, she’ll tell you how her graphs ended up being featured inside a news story for an even broader audience. 

About Vivian Jefferson 

Vivian works in the research office of Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia. The district is one of the largest in the state, with 83,000 students and 94 school facilities (and counting–they open a new school almost every year!). They average about 2,500 new students each year.  

The research office is a four-person team consisting of a program analyst, data analyst, office supervisor, and Vivian, who manages surveys.  

How Vivian’s Role Has Shifted Due to COVID-19 

Vivian noted that the data requests have been more urgent and bigger in size as the leadership tries to make decisions quickly. Loudoun County Public Schools closed in early March but was able to implement some online learning using existing tools.  

“The leadership wanted to monitor how that was going: Are students logging in, are they engaged? What we found was that the tools that we had couldn’t necessarily collect all of that data. We could tell how many students were logging in, but not if that were completing the activities or for how long they were logged in,” said Vivian.  

Vivian and her colleagues have been doing more surveys to try and find where people stand and what their concerns are.   

Vivian also said that the biggest impact she feels has been on what they haven’t been able to do.  

In the spring, they usually conduct assessments to see how students have progressed. They haven’t been able to do that, so they don’t know if the interventions they had in place worked. They also don’t know what the student needs and strengths are going into the next school year.  

“We won’t have the whole last quarter of data to be able to compare with previous years. Anytime we see trend data for 2020, it’s going to have an asterisk that it’s showing only three-quarters of the data. And I think that’s probably happening all over with school districts across the country,” Vivian said.  

Designing the School Reopening Surveys 

Let’s dive into the survey that was featured on the news. 

School leaders requested a “survey of families and staff to see where their comfort level is with these three models that we’ve developed, what they’re concerned about and their needs are.” The school system was considering three models: 100% in-person, 100% virtual, or a hybrid. 

Vivian’s office designed and administered two surveys: one for parents and one for all school-based staff, such as administrators, office staff, and other professionals in addition to teachers. 

They reviewed similar surveys from other school districts, and then added questions specific to their own county. 

Parents were asked about their spring 2020 online learning experience; which of the three reopening models they preferred; whether they had computer access for distance learning; and more. 

Staff were asked whether they received the support and resources they needed in spring 2020; whether they would be comfortable being inside a classroom with physical distancing measures in place; and whether they were comfortable taking their temperatures and wearing face coverings. 

Then, the surveys were translated into Spanish, and links were emailed to parents and staff, and further promoted on social media.  

Collecting the Survey Responses 

Vivian said, “We knew we were going to get a lot interest in it because it’s such a hot topic. We do a school climate survey every spring for staff and parents. The parent survey usually gets 11,000 to 12,000 responses. This survey had 46,000 parents respond. And then about 6,000 staff responded (usually only a couple thousand respond). It was huge.”  

Vivian’s office designed the surveys, collected 52,000 responses, and compiled the data into reports and a slideshow within just two weeks. 

Visualizing the Data 

Vivian color-coded the data to make the categories easier to navigate. For example, they consistently used teal for elementary schools, orange for middle schools, gold for high schools, and blue for the county. 

Vivian also drew attention to key findings by making pieces of the visuals darker or lighter: 

Vivian also said that, “On the titles of the slides, I tried to pull out what the main finding was, to highlight what they should be looking for.” 

The Reporting Model 

I personally love the reporting model that Vivian’s office followed. 

They developed two detailed reports plus a slideshow with key findings. And, the news story provided a high-level overview. There’s something available for every type of audience. 

Vivian and her colleagues have evolved their communications strategy. “When I first started there 14 years ago, we were doing the full Dusty Shelf Reports.  Over the past few years, we’ve realized that our decision makers need data to make policy and decisions within a few weeks. They don’t have time to wait for a year long, in-depth program evaluation. We’ve been kind of gearing up for a fast response model of reporting anyway, but this was really fast.” 

Two 13-Page Technical Reports 

Vivian’s office shared detailed results within two 13-page reports, one for the parent survey and one for the staff survey. 

These reports contained tables of both quantitative and qualitative survey results. 

The Slideshow 

Vivian and her colleagues also developed a slideshow, which would be presented at a school board meeting. The slideshow was viewed by school board members, administrators, staff, and parents. 

The News Story 

Finally, the news article and 90-second video provided a high-level overview of the survey results. 

Vivian said she was very surprised to see that someone on a Facebook group she’s a member of linked to the new story and said, “LCPS was on the news today!”  

“I thought, ‘I wonder what they said?’ And I clicked on it, and watched it, and I almost fell out of my chair, literally. They had used the graphs from my presentation!” she said.  

The news station used several of Vivian’s graphs, even enhancing one by circling one set of columns that they wanted to draw attention to.  

The news story combined the survey’s quantitative data with audio clips from the public comment portion of the school meeting: 

“I knew that people would be looking at the report, but I thought mainly like the school board, people who tuned in to watch the school board meeting,” Vivian mentioned. “But I didn’t realize that people would take anything from it and use it in a different way.” 

Reactions from the School Board and Parents 

And, a couple days after the school board meeting, Vivian was out shopping in a store and overheard a couple parents discussing statistics from the report. 

The school board also gave Vivian’s office good feedback on the data. 

Loudoun County Public Schools had considered three models for the 2020-2021 academic year: 

1. 100% in-person 

2. 100% virtual 

3. A hybrid model 

The school system opted for the hybrid model, in which half the students would be in school at a time. Parents will also have the option to opt-out and follow 100% virtual learning.  

Note: Vivian reached out to let us know that “as typical of the times we are in, this week the school board and superintendent changed the reopening plan to be all distance learning at first, with a phased approach to the hybrid model. You can see their revised plan here: Revised Plan for 2020-21.  

Learn More about Vivian’s Survey 

The survey results were shared publicly on the school board’s site.  

• The slides that were presented at the school board meeting in June 2020.
• The tables from the parent survey.
• The tables from the staff survey.

Read the WUSA 9 story, Loudoun County School Board votes on reopening plan, and watch the 1.5-minute video where Vivian’s work was featured.

Connect with Vivian Jefferson on LinkedIn.

Your Turn 

Comment below. Let us know which part of the conversation resonated with you the most.  

The post Can Your Dataviz Have an Influence on School Reopening Plans? appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

I recently partnered with a school system to visualize data about the percentage of their students who quality for free or reduced-price meals. In the United States, Free and Reduced Meals (a.k.a. FARMs) is basically how we measure poverty in schools. The more students who are eligible for free lunch (based on their family’s income), the more students who are low-income.

Before

Here’s the before version.

They wanted to compare one of the schools to the district as a whole.

The nested design almost made sense because it almost easily allows us to compare the school and district.

But the concentric circles throw off the proportions. Do you see the magenta segments? The outer ring is larger than the inner ring, so the outer five percent is incorrectly larger than the inner five percent. Oops!

After

Let’s look at three possible ways to better tell our story.

Stacked Columns

Here’s my first attempt. At the very least, we need to transform our circles into rectangles.

For all of these makeovers, I selected two colors: one color for the district and another color for the school. I also made the District and School text stand out in a large font size. You would use your own branded colors and fonts, not mine.

My Former Researcher Brain loves stacked charts. Researchy types like me tend to default to this layout. I’m not sure why… just because we’re used to stacked charts?

There’s nothing inherently wrong with stacked charts. They just tend to be overused. Even though I design data visualizations for a living, I still can’t shake my Former Researcher tendencies, and I tend to draft reports with way too many bar charts. As I’m editing my own work, I look for places where I can swap out my overused bar chart for another chart type. I don’t include variety just for variety’s sake. I look for places where the chart’s messaging might be clearer through another chart type.

Waffle Charts

Another option is a waffle chart, like these two waffles. Waffles contain 100 little squares. They’re like square pie charts.

This approach almost works. I like it, but I don’t love it. I’m not in love with the labels. I tried creating text boxes for each of the segments—e.g., 27% free meals or 5% reduced meals—but it was impossible to arrange the text boxes on top of the waffle without looking cluttered or busy. Then, I moved the text boxes to the top of the graph, where they are now… but the viewers have to zig-zag their eyes back and forth between the words and the squares. Good. But not great.

Icon Arrays

Or, go big-picture with icon arrays. I love this approach, and the school district did, too.

In this icon array, we intentionally collapsed the categories—we combined free and reduced into a single category—to focus on big patterns so that our audience wouldn’t get lost in the weeds.

We also intentionally transformed the percentages into whole numbers, which is a better approach for non-data people (i.e., regular people who don’t stare at spreadsheets all day). Whole numbers are a lower numeracy level than percentages, so more people will understand the information.

And we intentionally focused on small numbers—3 in 10 students instead of 30 in 100 students—so that the numbers feel more tangible.

Want to try icon arrays yourself? A heads up: You must be comfortable with rounding. Thirty-two percent of students in the district qualified for free or reduced meals, but I rounded that 32 down to 30. I don’t suggest coloring-in part of an icon. Partially-colored icons can get confusing, especially if you’re using those little people icons.

Icon arrays shine when you need an at-a-glance overview. For example, you might use icon arrays for slideshows or executive summaries. You can save the nuanced stacked columns or waffles for the body of the report.

Your Turn

This isn’t an exhaustive list of options.

What additional designs can you come up with?

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to explore how I made these visuals? Download the slides and use them however you’d like.

Download the Slides

The post Students Receiving Free and Reduced Meals: From Nested Donuts to an Icon Array appeared first on Depict Data Studio.