Accessibility Quick Wins: Lower the Reading Level

Dec 7th, 2021 / Data Visualization
How do we make our graphs more accessible? There’s a misconception that accessibility takes all day, that’s it’s costly, or that it’s complicated. Those are all false. We need to lower the reading level. Not because our readers dumb, but because they’re busy. They need to be able to understand what you wrote the first time—not the second, third, or fourth read-through.
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How to Engage Your Audience with “Choose Your Own Adventure” Presentations

May 11th, 2021 / Presentations
Ready for an advanced presentation technique? Want to make sure your audience is engaged? No, those 10-minute Q&As at the end of a presentation don’t count as adequate engagement. Let’s notch up our engagement! In this blog post, you’ll learn about the “Choose Your Own Adventure” method for engaging our audiences during presentations. You’ll see a brief demo of the Choose Your Own Adventure method, a behind-the-scenes tour of my slides and a discussion of the caveats so you can decide when to use this method.
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How to Organize Your PowerPoint Slides by Adding Sections

Apr 27th, 2021 / Data Visualization
Want to organize your PowerPoint slides a little better? There’s a behind-the-scenes trick that I love using in my own presentations: Sections! In this blog post and video tutorial, I’ll give you a demo of what sections are, how to add them, how I use them to hide topics and how I use them to re-order topics.
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Public Speaking Tips for Researchers and Evaluators from Isaac Castillo

Sep 8th, 2020 / Data Visualization
Isaac Castillo is the Director of Outcomes, Assessment and Learning at Venture Philanthropy Partners. He has 20+ years of experience with research, evaluation and measurement. Although Isaac has spent two decades working in research and evaluation, he started his career as a competitive debater and public speaking coach. I asked Isaac for his #1 piece of public speaking advice. Isaac advised us to prepare half as much content as we think we need. Here’s why.
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Can Your Dataviz Have an Influence on School Reopening Plans?

Jul 28th, 2020 / Data Visualization, Presentations, Reports
Our organizations collect all this data—through surveys, assessments, interviews, and so on—and then what? 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 who shared that her graphs had been featured on the news (!!!).
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