Titles | Depict Data Studio

How to Visualize Demographic Data: From Boring Bullet Points into Great Graphs

Sep 11th, 2018 / Data Visualization, Presentations

There’s nothing more boring than a slide full of bullet points! Bullet points scream, “I cared so little about my audience that I made these slides on the airplane last night.” In this article, I’ll share the step-by-step process I followed to get rid of bullet points and replace them with engaging visuals.

Reenvisioning a University’s Annual Report with Saturation, Annotations, and Icons

Aug 21st, 2018 / Data Visualization, Reports

Last fall I had the honor of keynoting the Southeastern Library Assessment’s Conference in Atlanta. We talked about a few data visualization principles, like showcasing your takeaway message with dark colors and clear text. Then, we worked together to transform the graphs, dashboards, and reports that the conference attendees had submitted ahead of time.

A Two-Hour Turnaround: How to Transform a Text-Heavy Report into a Visual-Lite Report

Aug 7th, 2018 / Data Visualization

Most of my early reports looked exactly like this: a few pages of 11-point font and some bullet points here and there. Except… Mine were way worse! I loved to write 100 pages of 11-point font and bullet points instead of these four summarized pages. If you’re a full-time graphic designer, then you have 40 hours a week to get fancy with covers and other visuals. If not, your time to mess around with reports is limited. I’m going to walk you through five easy steps that you can tackle in just two hours.

How to Objectively Measure Text Readability (and Lower Your Graph’s Reading Level)

Jun 12th, 2018 / Data Visualization, Presentations, Reports

If viewers can’t read your graph, why bother making it? Accessibility is at the top of my priority list. A lot of things go into a data visualization’s readability. In this post I’ll explain how to objectively measure text readability (and lower your graph’s reading level).

When Your Graph Is Too Smooshed to Read

May 29th, 2018 / Data Visualization, Presentations

You want to display a lot of historical data–great! But sometimes we have so many points in time that our graph’s labels get smooshy. In this post, I’ll show you a before/after data visualization makeover in which we selectively labeled a few key milestones in order to tell our story (and make the graph more legible).

How to Visualize Workshop Evaluation Results

Mar 20th, 2018 / Dashboards, Data Visualization, Reports

I give dozens of workshops, webinars, and conference keynotes each year. Which means I receive dozens of evaluation surveys each year. After my sessions, the clients who sponsored the workshop ask their participants to rate my session and often times a software program automatically compiles the results. I’m grateful for this automated reporting technology. But, at the same time, survey scanning tools drive me crazy.

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