Maybe you’re already using them…

Maybe you can make ’em in your sleep…

Or maybe you have no idea what I’m even talking about! (If that’s the case, stick around! This video is for you.)

You’ll learn about the differences between clustered bar charts and dot plots. Then, you’ll see a real-life example so you can start thinking about how you’d apply these in your own workplace.

What’s Inside

• 0:00 Intro
• 0:27 Dataviz On The Go
• 0:39 Obvious Differences (Bars vs Dots)
• 0:55 Subtle Differences (Length vs Endpoints & Distance Between Dots)
• 1:35 Dot Plots Avoid the “Diagonally-Down” Comparisons
• 1:57 Real-Life Example: School Climate Survey
• 2:59 Big A Accessibility (508/ADA compliance)
• 3:22 little a accessibility (intuitive)
• 4:22 Alternative Design: Dumbbell Dot Plots
• 4:48 Portrait vs Landscape Considerations
• 5:29 Your Turn

Download the Spreadsheet

It’s here: https://depictdatastudio.ck.page/clusteredbarsvsdumbbelldots

Transcript

Ann K. Emery: [00:00:00] Maybe you’re already familiar with dot plots. Maybe you’re already using them. Maybe you can make them in your sleep.

Or maybe you have no idea what I’m even talking about! If that’s the case, stick around. This video is for you.

You’re going to learn about the differences between clustered bar charts and dot plots.

And then I’ll show you a real life example. So you can start thinking about how you might apply this chart type to your own workplace.

I’m Ann Emery. You’re watching Dataviz on the Go, the series where I make quick tutorials as I’m racing around between workshops and webinars and conferences and consulting projects.

And speaking of consulting projects, I was recently in a meeting with a client and they were asking about these chart types, clustered bar charts and dumbbell dot plots.

And right away when you look at them, they’re obviously different! One’s got bars, one’s got dots, but there is a slight, smaller nuance that I want to draw your attention to here. [00:01:00] And that’s related to attention!

It’s related to where our eyes and brains, and therefore where our precious attention, goes when we look at each of these graphs.

So when you look at a bar chart, your eyes are going to look at obviously the end point, right? That’s the really juicy part of the bar chart.

With dot plots, they don’t waste any time. They cut right to the chase. I love them for their brevity and they just plot the end point. Okay, they don’t waste our ink and waste our time with all this, all this unnecessary ink.

Another slight difference is when you want to compare the end points, you have to do a little bit of a diagonally down movement to compare them, where dot plots plot everything on the same plane, so that it’s just a little bit faster, right?

Instead of stacked endpoints, it’s side by side: same line, same plane.

Alright, let’s look at a real life example because [00:02:00] this one with A, B, C, D and group one and group two is obviously super made up!

Let’s go back into the vault in my memory, where about 15 years ago, which is a million years ago, I was working on a lot of school climate surveys.

I did a lot of consulting for the U S Department of Education. I looked at test scores, all sorts of academic performance and school climate surveys, and I don’t remember the exact details of how this was measured, but I do know that we surveyed parents. And school staff, like the teachers and the principals and all the administrative staff. And then we compared how they responded on different measures.

This is the default graph that Excel is going to give you, which of course, if you’ve watched any of my other YouTube tutorials or read any of my blog posts over the years, you know, we can’t keep that. Okay. Let me just let, you know, just make it super duper clear what we’re not doing.

We’re not keeping these default, inaccessible settings. At a bare minimum, we’re going [00:03:00] to add Big A Accessibility –508 compliance and ADA compliance. That’s the usual stuff. That’s like making sure the font is big enough and dark enough, removing the legend and adding the direct labels right here, which is a win for grayscale printing and for custom words. Colorblindness.

And then we might even, I hope, I hope you do this. I hope you keep going with “little a accessibility” edits to make sure that your graph is really intuitive.

That’s going to be things like grouping, right? Finding groups of elements where parents scored the school higher, versus staff.

That’s going to be things like adding annotations, which, guess what? That’s just a good old text box. It’s a call- out box to help people figure out what the patterns are so that they’re not just guessing and searching and hunting for any type of insight.

This one, honestly, when it’s Big A and little a accessible, I’d say [00:04:00] it’s not that bad!

I wouldn’t lose sleep over this.

If you go this far with editing with your clustered bar charts, I’m going to say: virtual high five, leave it alone. You’ve graduated. No need to keep on going with editing unless you want to, unless you’re ready to really keep boosting your skills and try out something that’s a little bit more advanced.

And that advanced, uh, approach would be the dumbbell dot plot. Which as you know, only puts the emphasis on the end point, the juicy important part. And it helps draw your attention with this connecting line, the, the dumbbell part of it to the difference between the staff and the parents- or whatever groups you’re comparing in your project.

Now, you’re going to have to put the annotations on these finished charts in a little bit different spot, depending on whether you’re doing a landscape final project or a portrait final project.

So if this was going to be landscape, you’re going to have [00:05:00] space for the annotations off to the side. If it’s portrait, It’s going to be a lot narrower.

You’re just not going to have the space. So you’re probably going to have to put the call out boxes above each chart, something like this.

Here’s what I mean: landscape versus portrait. You’re just going to have to think very carefully about where everything fits. So it’s not so condensed that people can’t actually notice those important differences between your groups.

It’s your turn. Comment below this video. Let me know, are you using dot plots? For what? You probably aren’t doing school climate surveys. You’re probably using them for something completely different from this. And also let me know what types of how to questions you have. These are possible in good old Excel and PowerPoint and Word, but they require some advanced behind the scenes magic tricks to make them happen, which I am happy to share with you in future [00:06:00] videos.

The post What’s the Difference between Clustered Bars and Dumbbell Dots?? appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Technical tables have so much value, especially as visual appendices for reports.

In this blog post, you’ll get ideas for bringing your technical tables to life.

Before

Here’s what the “before” version of some technical tables looked like.

These are made-up numbers, but you get the idea.

The public health staff wanted to look at quarterly numbers, the total annual number, and the rate (the number of cases per 100,000 live births).

Even if you’re not measuring neonatal abstinence syndrome, I bet there are numbers that you track each quarter. You might even want to look at the total annual number, too. Get some inspiration from this blog post, and then adapt the ideas to your own workplace.

Re-Created in Excel

First, I re-made their table in good ol’ Excel.

The finished product will be a PDF, but the most efficient way to bring technical tables to life is to keep the numbers inside Excel the entire time. We’re not going to transfer anything to Word.

Declutter

Let’s tackle the easy edits, such as:

• removing all the borders;
• adding back just the gray horizontal borders;
• removing the background fill; and
• left-aligning the text and right-aligning the numbers.

Add Trendlines

We’ll bring the quarterly trends to life with sparklines.

Add Bars

We’ll bring the annual totals to life with data bars:

We’ll bring the rates to life with data bars, too:

Brand Colors & Brand Fonts

Time to format!

We’ll apply brand colors and brand fonts:

We’ll color-code the text to match the bars.

(Sometimes the table’s columns get so narrow that it’s tricky to tell which number corresponds to which bar. That’s where color-coding comes to the rescue.)

As a general rule of thumb, colored font should be bold so that it passes 508/ADA color contrast guidelines.

Text Hierarchy & Intro Sentences

A text hierarchy means the title should be largest, boldest, and darkest so that it’s easiest to spot. (Followed by H1s and H2s if we had them.) We’re developing a hierarchy of information so our readers can stay organized.

As a general rule of thumb, I make sure headings are twice as big as body font. The body font is size 11, so this title is size 22 and bold.

We’ll also add intro sentences, and move that footnote info about the asterisks to the top. (People need to read that sentence before the table, not after.)

PDF- and Printer-Friendly

We’ve kept everything in Excel — that’s the only way to add the spark lines and data bars, and pasting tables into Word is a waste of time — but the final version will be shared with others as a PDF.

In the real version of this project, the PDF was about 15 pages long. There were various tabulations on various topics, not just neonatal abstinence syndrome.

We’ll need to:

• set the Print Area;
• adjust the Page Layout (portrait to landscape for easier on-screen reading);
• adjust the margins (0.5 to 1 inches is sufficient);
• add contact info and a logo so people can get in touch with questions; and
• adjust the column widths and row heights so everything fits juuust right.

Optional: Sort by Rates, Not Alphabetically

Finally, we might choose to sort the table by the most important column (rates, in this example) instead of alphabetically by county name.

I’m usually a fan of sorting. But I’m on the fence here. I also see the value in the leaving the counties alphabetized so readers can search for their own county. Hmm.

The Final Version

The visuals help us spot the patterns (thanks, Picture Superiority Effect).

The branding will help us look more professional to outside audiences (so we don’t look Frankensteined — when all our colleagues use different colors and fonts, and we put everything together in one doc, and it’s a hot mess).

The PDF’d appendices can be merged with the PDF’d report (thanks, Adobe Acrobat).

The Before-After Transformation

Once you’ve got intermediate/advanced Excel vizardry skills, the whole process will take less than an hour.

Really, this should take you less than 15 minutes!

If not, you’ll simply need to brush up on your Excel skills.

Dataviz is supposed to be fast and easy.

Bonus: Download the Materials

Want to explore my spreadsheet? Download my Excel file and adapt it for your own project.

The post How to Bring Your Technical Tables to Life appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Under the guidance of the inestimable Ann Emery’s “Report Redesign” course, I had a go at making the contents page of a previous evaluation report meaningful.

Here are the steps I followed.

For anonymity, I have renamed the evaluand as (gender org) and the funder as (funder).

The Original

Here’s what the initial Table of Contents looked like:

Draft 1

I cut my multi-page contents page from three heading levels to only Heading 1s.

Draft 2

I changed some headings to be more meaningful.

For example,

• from ‘Summary Report’ to ‘Highlights’
• from ‘Methodology’ to ‘The Outcome Harvesting Approach’; and
• from ‘Contributions that influenced the outcomes’ to ‘The role of (gender org), gender specialists and (funder)’.

Draft 3

I grouped the headings, named the groups, and set it up in landscape.

I also enlarged ‘Contents,’ in response to one of Ann’s ongoing exhortations to “double the size of the headings from what you currently use.”

I moved from Word into PowerPoint.

Draft 4

I created a section divider in my brand colours and added icons.

Ann proposes use of such dividers for short reports, with a different colour for each section – in long reports you’d use a whole page for each section.

I used her ’20-minute page cover’ method by layering a cylinder shape in my brand colour, somewhat transparent, over a Word Cloud, and ‘Contents’ on top.

I added an icon to each section and recoloured the sections to colours I will use for the divider page and headings of each section, taken from my brand colours.

Draft 5

I re-coloured the section divider and put in page numbers.

As ‘gender’ in the Word Cloud overwhelmed the heading, I used the ‘textures’ option in ‘format colours’ to create a grey textured layer over the Word Cloud, and changed the colour of ‘Contents.’

To me this shift from a pro-forma contents page to this version invites the reader to find what they’re looking for in the report.

Going forward, I would plan this out before writing the report, to help organise my own thinking about the contents and how to communicate it.

Thanks to Ann.

The post From Formulaic to Meaningful: Constructing a Useful “Table of Contents” Page for an Evaluation Report appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

Maybe you’d like to showcase your company’s achievements over the past year.

Maybe you’d like to celebrate your own achievements.

Infographics are a great way to visualize key points (without boring our audiences, which can happen in lengthy reports).

Back in December 2022, Sue Griffey brought her draft infographics to our weekly Office Hours.

In this blog post, you’ll see Sue Griffey’s annual infographic for her global mentoring practice, SueMentors.

You’ll also see several of Sue’s drafts. I hope this behind-the-scenes view helps you develop your own infographic.

Watch the Progression

You can watch Sue’s progression here.

This is a 7-minute segment from an hour-long Office Hours session.

Here’s what’s inside.

Sue’s Previous Infographics

First, Sue shared three examples of past years’ infographics.

Draft 1: Six Tiles of Content

Then, we talked about orientation.

Should her infographic be square?

Rectangular??

Portrait???

Landscape????

A single image?????

Several standalone images??????

A decade ago, infographics were mostly portrait. I’ll never forget Chris Lysy’s cartoon from 2014, where he joked that 2:32 aspect ratio infographics could practically be used as belts.

Nowadays, infographics can be any orientation. Ideally, we’d customize the infographic to the platform where it’s being shared.

For example, Instagram used to require squares, although you can upload square or rectangular images nowadays. And now the algorithm prefers short video Reels over images. It’s tough to keep up!

What does LinkedIn’s algorithm prefer? That’s Sue’s primary platform for connecting with others. Should her infographic be square? Rectangular?? How about both???

We considered a modular, grid-like design.

Sue already had 6 buckets of information. What a nice round number!

That means she could organize her 6 existing topics in landscape…

…and/or portrait…

…and/or as 6 individual social media posts.

In the video, you’ll see Sue’s very first draft:

Draft 2: Adjusting Colors and Adding Visuals

Next, Sue “softened all the brand colors.”

She added icons.

She added white overlays to de-emphasize the icons.

Draft 3: Focusing on Brand Blue

Sue decided to go back to “one panel of blue” (her brand color).

She added a “road map” within the TV icon.

She created a bit.ly link so that readers could learn more.

She continued softening the icons.

 “I challenged myself to take out even more words,” Sue explained.

Final Version: Smaller Boxes with More “White” Space

On New Year’s Eve Day, Sue finished her “80% is good enough” final draft.

She made the boxes smaller, which added more “white” space between the buckets of information.

Next Steps

In all her “spare” time, Sue might write a long-form blog post to elaborate on each of these 6 topics.

(She did provide additional details in a document shared publicly on Dropbox, too.)

But, as we discussed in the video, “there are endless ways to recycle content.” At some point, we have to create deadlines for ourselves and move on to the next item on our to-do lists.

Software Used: Microsoft PowerPoint

During Office Hours, another participant asked Sue which software platform she used to create her year-end infographic.

It’s PowerPoint!

Sue said, “It’s the easiest way to move photos around and to keep graphics together.”

In a previous Office Hours, we opened Canva together and browsed their year-end infographic templates. I wasn’t impressed. There were just bullet points, icons, and photos—all of which can be handled inside PowerPoint, too. Plus, Sue’s already comfortable in PowerPoint. Every new software platform has a learning curve. We can’t spend time learning them all. PowerPoint worked perfectly fine and there was no reason to switch.

“I did feel like I was moving information around and conveying things much better than I did a year ago,” Sue said. I agree. Well done!!!

Connect with Sue Griffey

You can view Sue’s infographic on LinkedIn here.

And don’t forget to connect with Sue on LinkedIn.

The post The Progression of Sue Griffey’s Year-End Infographic appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

But it doesn’t have to be!!!

Let’s stop hiding important qualitative concepts inside Text Walls that no one reads.

Step 0: Take Pride in Your Report’s Formatting

We’ll use landscape so that it’s easier to see on a landscape computer screen.

We’ll add the organization’s Theme Colors and Theme Fonts so that the document looks professional and enhances branding.

We’ll add a Text Hierarchy. Instead of a single Heading 1, we need to add several Heading 2s. We also need to enlarge all the font sizes. No more puny size 12 or 14 for headings!!

In this example:

• the Heading 1 is size 24 bold in a brand color,
• the Heading 2s are size 16 bold in a brand color, and
• the body font is size 11 in dark gray. (Not black, which causes eye strain and makes people think of funerals, at least according to my graphic design friends.)

Step 1: Choose Your Diagram

I like to scroll through SmartArt for ideas.

You can also browse Diagrammer, which is SmartArt on steroids.

Here are the most common diagrams I’ve used to visualize qualitative concepts in research and evaluation projects:

Processes

Processes are for linear, step-by-step concepts. There’s a defined start and end.

Examples:

• A lot of my own training programs, where I teach how-to instructions for dataviz.
• Logic models.
• Research methods (e.g., we recruited participants, and then they did this, and then they did this).

Cycles

Cycles are for processes that loop around and around until infinity.

Example:

• The program evaluation lifecycle, in which you plan for the evaluation, collect the data, analyze the results, use the data to inform decisions… and then start the process all over again.

Concentric Circles

Concentric circles are for spreading concepts and for inner, middle, and outer layers.

Example:

• An agency made a plan to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. They identified three layers of changes needed: at the individual level, at the departmental level, and at the agency level.

Components

Components are for pieces of the whole—when you want to show that all these random things aren’t so random; they’re connected. They’re just not connected as a linear process or as a cycle.

Examples:

• In my master’s thesis, I researched how nonprofit organizations were using data to have a bigger impact on the community. In the literature review, I identified ~10 specific examples of data use, which were all related to the broader theme of data use.
• The U.S. Surgeon General’s Framework for Workplace Mental Health & Wellness (scroll down a bit here).

Pyramids

Pyramids, or ladders, are for concepts that build upon one another. The base layer is the foundation, the middle layer builds upon it, and you’re aiming for the pinnacle at the very top.

Example:

• In my Report Redesign classes, I organized the techniques into a pyramid. Participants learn the foundational skills, then the slightly narrower skills, then the nitty-gritty details that pull everything together.

Matrices

Matrices are fancy tables or plots.

Examples:

• This blog post about four types of dashboards.
• Lots of diagrams from McKinsey.

Venn Diagrams

Venn Diagrams are for interwoven, overlapping components.

Example:

• A project involving several groups of people, who all come together to advocate for their issue.

Honeycomb

Honeycombs, meh. I don’t love these. They’re overused, along with the gears. If you’re not sure what else to use, this is still better than a Text Wall.

Step 2: Introduce Your Diagram

Show the fully-colored diagram.

Don’t cram too much text on the diagram itself. In this example, I’m pretending we’re describing three steps, which repeat over and over.

Add a paragraph or two to explain the diagram at a high level.

Make sure there’s plenty of color contrast by using bold white or bold black text against your brand colors. Use this color contrast checker to figure out which font color to use.

Step 3: Repeat Your Diagram

Here’s the important part: Repeat your diagram as you explain each segment in more detail.

Copy and paste the diagram.

Then, gray everything out, and just highlight the segment you’re explaining in a dark brand color.

For bonus points, you can color-code the Heading 2s to match the diagram.

Make sure your colors are consistent with what you introduced earlier!!! You wouldn’t want Step 1 to be purple, and then blue, and then green.

I usually delete the words from the diagram that I’m not currently explaining. For example, when explaining Step 1, I delete the words Step 2 and Step 3 from the diagram. I don’t want any issues with color contrast; the white font wouldn’t be legible against the light gray diagram, so I simply delete it.

Make sure there’s plenty of white space between sections. I use at least 0.5 inches of white space (e.g., between the diagram and its paragraph, between the paragraphs).

For bonus points, break up the paragraphs into points and bold a few key words. Long paragraphs are dated. Readers expect short, skimmable paragraphs these days.

Check out the paragraphs in this blog post, for example. They’re 1-4 sentences long. There are lots of headings. There’s bolding to increase skimmability.

This blog post is also written at a 7th grade reading level.

Peek at the document with the gridlines on. Make sure the diagrams are aligned with each other.

The Final Product: Repeating Diagrams

I don’t care that it takes up two pages instead of one.

Two great pages will beat one lousy page any day of the week.

Yes, your boss might give you a made-up page limit. “Make sure everything fits on a page!” Those limits were created because bosses got tired of Text Walls. And, because we used to print a lot.

Nowadays, people don’t print as much. I think the pandemic was a major turning point. With everyone working remotely, nobody had access to the office printer anymore. Any who wants to pay to print at home??

I’ve never, ever heard complaints about two accessible pages vs. one inaccessible page. The word count is the same. (Well, I added some headings.) But the information is richer because we’ve added a diagram and then explained it piecemeal.

Adapt as Needed

Use can use any diagram you need—a cycle, linear process, pyramid, or concentric circles.

You can do this in Word.

You can do this in PowerPoint.

You can do this in Canva.

You can do this in Publisher.

I’m software-agnostic. I don’t care which software program you use. When formatted well, you’ll get the same high-quality end result regardless of which program you’re using.

In this example:

• The diagram was wide, so when I introduced it, it needed the full width of the page.
• When I repeated the diagram, none of the words (“Phase 1”) fit, so I deleted them.

Adapt as needed!!!

Download My Word Document

Bonus!

Want to see how I arranged everything inside of Word?

You can download the document here: https://depictdatastudio.gumroad.com/l/UseRepeatingDiagrams

The post How to Visualize Qualitative Data [Qual Dataviz with Small Multiples Diagrams!] appeared first on Depict Data Studio.