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For these obvious reasons — clip-art is outdated and hard to see — clip-art gets The Big Red X.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

In this video, let’s make a starter dashboard in Microsoft Excel.

You’ll learn how to make four quick visuals:

1. Sparklines
2. Data bars
3. Symbol fonts
4. Color scales

I use these visuals over and over in my real-life consulting projects.

Watch the Tutorial

Sparklines

Sparklines are helpful for visualizing patterns over time, like daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual data.

To create sparklines:

1. Highlight the first row of your table.
2. Go to the Insert tab.
3. Go to the Sparklines section.
4. Click on the first one (a Line sparkline).
5. Choose where we want to put the sparklines (off to the right of the table).
6. Click insert and enjoy the sparklines!

We can also edit our sparklines!

We might adjust the data source, type (from line to column), or color. I typically gray everything out and highlight a high point or low point in a dark brand color.

We can also group and ungroup our sparklines (e.g., if we want each category in our dashboard to have its own color).

And if we change our mind, we can clear them out.

Data Bars

Data Bars give us horizontal bars (as opposed to sparklines’ vertical columns).

They’re helpful for visualizing summary statistics like totals or averages.

To create data bars:

1. Highlight the cells you want to visualize (e.g., the total column).
2. Go to the Home tab.
3. Click on the Conditional Formatting button.
4. Select solid-filled data bars.

Symbol Fonts

I use checkboxes to visualize whether I met a goal or target.

We can get quick checkboxes through symbol fonts!

In the video, you’ll see me write an =if() statement to transform g’s and c’s into Webdings checkboxes.

Audiences love the checkboxes. They’re intuitive, colorblind-friendly, and grayscale printing-friendly.

Color Scales

a.k.a. heat maps or heat tables.

I love color scales for visualizing the interior of my table—when I want to compare lots of rows and columns to each other.

To create color scales:

1. Highlight the cells you want to visualize (i.e., the interior of the table).
2. Go to the Home tab.
3. Click on the Conditional Formatting button.
4. Select Color Scales. Most of the time, we’ll use a Green-White Color Scale. That’ll make the big numbers dark (and the small numbers will be light).

Combos

In real life, we might combine several of these techniques.

We might add color scales to the interior of the table…

We might compare the totals with data bars…

We might add Webdings checkboxes to see whether we met a goal…

And we might add more data bars to see how far we were over or under our goal.

Formatting

In real life, we’d edit these quick visuals.

I suggest:

• Using brand colors and brand fonts.
• Outlining the color scales in white (so the cells can be differentiated against each other).
• Placing the data bars in a separate column than their numeric labels.
• Coloring the checkboxes (rather than boring black).
• Adjusting the colors in the over/under bars (to avoid scary red).
• Moving the labels to the over/under bars to their own column (via an =if() statement to save time).

Download this Spreadsheet

Try it yourself!

Download this spreadsheet.

Explore the completed version with the =if() statements.

Use the empty version to practice alongside me as you replay the video.

Get in Touch

If you get stuck, reach out o­n LinkedIn.

The post How to Make a Not-So-Scary Starter Dashboard in Excel appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

—

Are you tired of text heavy reports to summarize grant findings?

Do you want to update the look and feel of your reporting templates?

Save time and energy by using static Excel dashboards to design your grant deliverables. 

Your program data will come to life before your eyes and your readers will thank you. 

Read on to learn more about my journey implementing static dashboards in a non-profit context.

Dashboard Design Course Comes to the Rescue

New to dashboard design, I enrolled in Ann K. Emery’s Dashboard Design course to help tackle an upcoming grant report with many moving parts. 

Mental Health America of Greater Houston’s (MHAGH) Center for School Behavioral Health (CSBH) received a two-year grant from the Rebuild Texas Fund in 2018 to help 9 school districts in the Greater Houston Area address emerging behavioral health needs from Hurricane Harvey and improve their ability to respond to future disasters. 

My Challenge: 9 School Districts x 21 Recommendations

To assess school district capacity for addressing student behavioral health needs, CSBH uses a rubric with 21 recommendations for addressing the prevention, early intervention, and treatment of behavioral health issues in students. 

My challenge was to show the progress each of the 9 Rebuild Texas school districts made implementing the 21 recommendations from start to finish of the grant.  

Using Static Dashboards to Track Progress Over Time

Cue the entrance of a tool that saved me time and created a great looking end-product: static Excel dashboards.

Here’s how I created two different styles of dashboards: A project overview, and individual report cards for each district.

Dashboard Showing the General Overview

To create a general overview tracking school district progress, I did the following:

• Clustered school districts in groups of 3 and added grey lines for easier reading.
• Used the start and end years to list how many recommendations were completed.
• Inserted trend arrows to show which districts had improved.  I decided to remove the arrows for neutral or declining trends to simplify takeaways and make the report less “busy” for the reader.
• Inserted deviation bars to show percentage of change from start to end.
• Ordered results from largest to smallest amount of change.

Individual District Report Cards

I then created individual district report cards by:

• Inserting checkboxes to indicate recommendation completion.
• Replacing deviation bars with progress bars to show the depth of implementation of each recommendation.
• Including grey shading in the background of the progress bars to indicate progress remaining.
• Inserting trend arrows to further indicate improvement since there might have been progress in implementation even though the recommendation was incomplete.

Recommendation-by-Recommendation Summary

I also included a recommendation-by-recommendation summary, which was categorized by fully and partially completed recommendations.

Conclusions Section

Finally, I created a section for conclusions to inform the reader of the progress made as well as areas for future improvement. 

Lessons Learned

Here are three lessons learned.

Excel is so Versatile

Excel is much more versatile than I thought.

There are so many functions in Excel that I was underutilizing, so many hidden treasures. 

The amount of visualization that can be done with the conditional formatting command alone was eye opening. 

Why pay more for expensive software when Excel can do the work?

Save Time Using Only One Software

Transferring work from Excel into other products can be overkill when you can just do it all in Excel. 

Save time by designing single or multi-page reports in Excel. A cinch after taking the Dashboard Design course.

Formatting Matters

This course helped me break bad habits and reconsider my assumptions. 

Here are some formatting takeaways:

• There is such a thing as using too much bold text.
• Consider using landscape view when designing reports. It’s easier on your reader not to have so many items crammed into a narrow portrait view.
• Use more white space, less is more.
• Webdings and Wingdings font, who knew?

Colleague Reception

While I enrolled in the Dashboard Design course to help me with a very specific project in mind, I have since designed static dashboards for all of my organization’s program areas and am only getting started! 

My colleagues have given very positive feedback, as the dashboards have made it easier to analyze their program data more comprehensively. 

They especially appreciate one-pagers that can be shared with different stakeholders, including board members and program collaborators. 

Upcoming Goals

Next on my list is using automation to create a series of matching goal tracking dashboards that let programs see their progress toward grant metrics by funder.  I am embracing automation in 2022! 

I’ll also be visualizing accounting data to help programs get a better understanding of their funding use. The areas for application within our organization are endless.

I hope other non-profit professionals working with data will be able to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity. 

Connect with Josephine Engels

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephine-engels-mhagh/

The post Creating Reports for Grant Deliverables Using Excel Dashboards appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

There’s a misconception that accessibility takes all day, that’s it’s costly, or that it’s complicated. Those are all false.

Accessibility is woven into all my trainings, but since this is a topic I get asked about a lot, I decided to make a new talk that’s focused just on accessibility for dataviz. 

In Spring 2021 I gave a talk at the Good Tech Fest conference about dataviz accessibility quick wins. 

The talk was a “Choose Your Own Adventure” style where the audience chose what we discussed from a list of options. They chose: 

• direct labels, 
• lower the reading level, and 
• lower the numeracy level. 

You can watch the recording or read the highlights. Enjoy! 

Watch the Conversation 

You’ll learn about lowering the numeracy level. Then, you’ll see a case study that combines several accessibility quick wins. 

How to Lower the Numeracy Level 

We’ve discussed how to lower the reading level, but how do we lower the numeracy level?  

Lowering the numeracy level just means making sure the numbers are easy to understand.  

There are a couple of stages to this, so even if you only move one step, that’s a win.  

For example, let’s say you’re starting with 33.26%.

To lower the numeracy level, the first stage would be to round it to 33%. That’s a win!

The next stage would be to go from rounded percentages to fractions. So, we could turn that 33% into 1/3. Another win!

The final stage would be taking that 1/3 fraction and changing it to 1 in 3 in a sentence.

This is a general goal to aim for. It won’t work every single time for every single project. In other words, you can’t move from 33.26% to 1 in 3 for every project. Just try to move one step in every project.

Before: Percentages with Two Decimal Places

Let’s practice lowering the numeracy level.

Let’s talk about what’s already going well:

• It’s a donut chart with only two slices – check.
• It’s got dark-light contrast – check.
• And the sentence, “33.26% of participants agreed that the program was a good use of time” is readable. (It scored a 5.8 on the Flesch-Kincaid scale.)

After: Round to the Nearest Whole Number

Let’s make it even better!

I know you understand percentages. Of course you do. You’re reading a data blog.

But percentages are tricky for people who don’t work in data careers.

Percentages.

Percent changes.

Percentage point changes.

Percentiles.

Those are similar-sounding terms with completely different math and meanings.

No wonder others get confused by percentages.

Let’s be proactive and stop confusion at the source—by avoiding percentages whenever possible.

One improvement would be to round the decimal places to the nearest whole number.

After: Use Fractions Instead of Percentages

Another quick win would be to turn the 33% into a fraction (1/3).

After: Put the Fraction into a Sentence

And the best practice would be to turn the 1/3 into one in three.

You could also adjust the chart, transforming the donut chart into an icon array.

That way, there’s cohesion between the chart and the text (i.e., they both talk about one in three).

I don’t recommend using gingerbread people.

• Men don’t have to wear pants and women don’t have to wear dresses.
• Some people don’t identify as men or women.
• You may not know if the data collected represents men or women.

So, what to do instead?

Use icons of real people.

This example is about people, so let’s show the people.

This is symbol font called WeePeople. You can download this for free and use it to visualize people as the real human beings they are.

Accessibility Case Study

By now, you’ve learned about direct labeling, lowering the reading level, and lowering the numeracy level.

Let’s look at a case study and put it all together.

Here’s a before graph based on a real-life project. This organization was running a workforce development program.

In the Good Tech Fest session, I asked the audience to describe what they saw going wrong.

Here’s what they came up with:

• Diagonal text
• Decimals
• Change from a column chart into a bar chart
• Add a takeaway title
• Reverse the order
• Color coding

Within three minutes, we made quick edits that made a big difference.

Rotate the Chart

The first thing we did was rotate it from a column chart to a bar chart.

(We wanted all the text to be horizontal.)

Round Decimals to Whole Numbers

Our next edit was to round the decimals to the nearest whole numbers.

Add a Takeaway Title and Dark-Light Contrast

Next, we added a takeaway title.

Instead of “Participants Working in Each Industry,” we now have “20% of Participants Worked in Retail.”

Then, we highlighted the retail data. We changed that bar to a darker color and grayed out everything else. Dark-light contrast is an easy and effective data storytelling technique.

Add Fractions within a Sentence and Icons

We changed the percentage to a fraction in a sentence.

Then, we added icons, which makes our data more memorable.

Accessibility doesn’t have to take all day.

Accessibility doesn’t have to cost anything.

Accessibility doesn’t have to be complicated.

With a few quick edits, we’ve made this chart faster to read; we lowered the numeracy; we lowered the reading levels; and we made it more memorable.

Download the eBook

Want to learn more about accessible data visualization?

In this ebook, you’ll learn 10 quick wins for designing accessible data visualizations. These small edits can have a big impact for our coworkers, board members, and funders who have color vision deficiencies, hearing loss, or learning disabilities–and for all of us who are pressed for time.

For your complimentary copy, use code: goodtechfest

The post Accessibility Quick Wins: Lower the Numeracy Level appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

If so, I wrote this article for you!

This is one of mannnny techniques for transforming words into visuals.

Let’s say you’ve got a bullet point list about U.S. states, like this:

This is a good first draft, but let’s keep going. Icons can boost the memorability of our findings. So let’s add icons:

Let’s add more icons—the arrows, which I downloaded here from the Noun Project—to further help our viewers understand that we’re talking about a variable that increased or decreased:

And don’t forget to color-code and bold a few key words to make the remaining text more skimmable:

Want to make something like this? I hope so! It’s easy.

I’m going to show you the magic trick I used to create each of the state icons.

I typed some letters into text boxes on my slide:

And changed the font to StateFace:

StateFace is a magic font that lets you turn regular ol’ letters into state outlines:

How to Install the StateFace Font

Here’s how you download the StateFace font onto your computer.

1. Go to https://www.fontsquirrel.com/fonts/stateface

Font Squirrel is the website where I download lots of my custom fonts. (I also download fonts from www.google.com/fonts.)

2. Click on the Download OTF button

Within a few seconds, a Zip folder will begin downloading onto your computer.

Do you work for a Federal or state government agency? Or an organization with strict downloading rules? This is where you might need to pause and get your IT administrator’s permission. It’s worth the extra paperwork! StateFace is such a versatile font. I use it all the time in my visualizations.

3. Open the Zip folder

Mine ends up in my Downloads folder.

4. Click on the StateFace Regular file and select Install

My Downloads folder has two files in it. Click on the StateFace Regular file. You’ll see a pop-up window, like this one. Click on the Install button.

5. Begin Using StateFace in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, etc.

Your new font will show up in PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and so on.

You’ll want to refer back to the Keyboard Map regularly to figure out which letter produces which state shape. You can view the Keyboard Map here: https://propublica.github.io/stateface/

Within minutes, we’ve transformed our forgettable bullet point list into a straightforward and great-looking visual. We could include this visual in the executive summary of a report or as one of the introductory slides in our presentation.

Your Turn

Have you used the StateFace font in your project? Comment and let me know how you used it! This is just a fictional example, and we’d all benefit from hearing about real-life scenarios where it was helpful.

Bonus: Download My Slides

Want to explore how I created this simple visual? Download my slides and use them however you’d like.

(I’m using custom fonts and colors here–Montserrat and StateFace–so the file will look a little different on your computer.)

Download my slides

The post How to Install the “StateFace” Font appeared first on Depict Data Studio.