Here’s how you can repeat a few rows at the top of each page.

What’s Inside

0:00 Welcome to Dataviz On The Go

0:08 The Visual Appendices

0:22 The PDF/Print Issue, Oops!

0:42 The Best Solution

1:42 3… 2… 1…

Transcript

[00:00:00] I’m Ann Emery. You’re watching Dataviz On The Go, the series where I make quick tutorials for you as I’m racing around between my workshops. I was giving a dataviz workshop recently and we were making these visual appendices for the back of a report. And they look nice in Excel. They’ve got some light visuals here, like the bars to help us find key patterns.

And then you go to print and you’re like, this almost looks right. You know, this, this would be like PDFed or printed or something. Imagine this as the appendix of your report. It looks nice on the first page. You can tell what’s what, the column headers are there, but then on the second page, it’s like, Oh, what’s even going on?

What’s what? Okay. How do you repeat the column headers when your table breaks across multiple pages? There are a couple of ways to do this. I’m going to show you the way that I think is the fastest. I don’t want to waste your time with any like, so, so mediocre solutions. I think the best way is you go to.

Page layout. You go to print titles [00:01:00] and look at this rows to repeat at the top when it’s printed or pdf. You click on the little arrow which minimizes your window and then you go select the row that you want to repeat. Not the whole thing. Because that would be redundant. That would be unnecessary. It’s probably just this juicy row, row six.

And then you go back to your little arrow. It expands the window. You can say, okay, I’m going to click print preview here while we’re in here, just to show you what it would look like. Look, column headers there as usual, right where you expected. And they’re also on the second page. Isn’t that nice? You just repeat a couple of rows at the top of your page.

Three, two, one. Don’t forget to like, subscribe, and share. Not sponsored. What did you say?

The post How to Keep Headings in View When You Print or PDF (So Your Excel Table is Easier to Read) 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.

Nobody wants to pour blood, sweat, and tears into a document that sits on a dusty shelf.

In May 2021, I co-presented with Elizabeth Grim at the Eastern Evaluation Research Society’s annual conference.

Our session was titled, “How to Design Reports that Actually Inform Decisions with Software We Already Have.”

Attendees learned about:

• The 30-3-1 approach to reporting with unlimited visual appendices
• Adding a 20-minute report cover
• Adding color-coded divider pages
• Aiming for 1+ visual on every single page
• Including a variety of visuals
• Using inclusive, non-violent language

Today, let’s focus on one of those techniques: following the 30-3-1 approach to reporting, which is the bare minimum for designing useful reports.

Watch the 10-Minute Tutorial

I recorded a portion of our presentation for you. Here’s a 10-minute lesson about the 30-3-1 approach.

Hopefully you recognize this technique already; I’ve been speaking about it on panels for a decade.

I’ve raised the bar over the past decade though. I used to simply encourage us to follow 30-3-1. I’ve clarified my advice to add visual appendices, too.

The Old Way: The 100-Page Technical Report

In the video, I show you the old way of writing reports in research and evaluation settings.

The single, 100-page technical report used to be the norm. And in some settings, it still is. (I’m thinking of the government agencies and government contractors that I work with.)

Nobody’s got time to read all 100 pages. I think we’ve known that for a while. 30-3-1 to the rescue!

The 30-3-1 Approach

Don’t want your reports to sit on a dusty shelf?

At a bare minimum, I suggest following the 30-3-1 approach, which includes:

• A 30-page report (30 pages maximum) with unlimited visual appendices
• A separate 3-page PDF
• A separate 1-page PDF

In a perfect world, with more time and a bigger budget, I’d love to see slideshows, dashboards, and infographics for every single project, too.

Reports are a good starting point.

The 30-3-1 approach with unlimited visual appendices is even better.

And adding slideshows, dashboards, and infographics is even better.

This approach is all about tailoring for our audiences. Rather than pouring everything into a single document, we design a 30-pager with one audience in mind, a 3-pager with another audience in mind, and so on.

Paring Down 100 Pages into 30 Pages or Less

This is the hardest step. You’ll need to get input from your boss, your report’s audience, a stakeholder group, etc.

I suggest following Marie Kondo’s advice: Focus on what you’re keeping, not on what you’re letting go of. In the video, I discuss her technique for decluttering our closets: Make a big pile of all your clothes, and then look at each item to decide what sparks joy.

We focus our mental energy on the best pieces that are worth keeping, rather than getting stressed by what we’re discarding.

We can apply the same strategy to paring down reports. Focus on the charts, pages, or chapters that are so valuable that they need to stay within the 30-page report body.

We don’t have to delete the rest of the pages. We simply move them to the back of the report, and they form the appendices.

The 3-Pager and 1-Pager

When we’re done with the 30-page report, we also need a separate 3-page report and a separate 1-page report.

Sometimes we’re tempted to count the executive summary as the 3-pager or 1-pager. That’s not enough!!! I recommend creating separate PDFs altogether.

And of course, we don’t have to follow the 30-3-1 approach exactly. We’re aiming for a full version, a mid-length version, and a short-n-sweet version. Your 3-pager might actually be 5 pages, for example. The spirit of the 30-3-1 approach is still there. I want us to avoid only writing a 100-page technical report. 20-10-2 or 30-5-2 will still help our readers tremendously.

A Case Study from a Public Health Agency

In the video, I mentioned a guest blog post from Sara DeLong about how the Wisconsin Division of Public Health applied this technique.

Her agency developed a 130-page report, a 10-page summary, and a 1-page summary. Then, they also created videos, images, and billboards (!!!) to ensure that the messages got off the dusty shelf and into the community.

Add Unlimited Visual Appendices

In the video, I also discussed adding unlimited visual appendices to the end of our reports.

Here’s the blog post where you can learn about visual appendices and get tips for creating them yourself.

Spoiler alert: I create these tables in Excel; add Data Bars, Color Scales, and Spark Lines; and then save them as PDFs.

Learn More

My co-presenter, Elizabeth Grim, also wrote a conference session recap.

Your Turn

Have you followed 30-3-1? Have you created unlimited visual appendices? Please comment below and link to your public-facing examples or describe your project. I’d love to learn from you.

The post The 30-3-1 Approach with Unlimited Visual Appendices: The Bare Minimum for Designing Reports that Actually Inform Decisions appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

This report summarized survey responses from both universities and their students. Even with hundreds of survey responses and dozens of survey questions, we kept the report’s body to just six pages!

How’d we choose which findings to include in the report’s main body?!

That can be a daunting task. But it doesn’t have to be.

It’s much easier to pare down our report’s content when we’ve got appendices to back us up.

We don’t have to worry about forgetting any important details, since readers can simply flip to the back to learn more.

We get to be transparent by showing all the data (in the appendices) without overwhelming our busy readers (by trying to shove everything into the body of the report).

This particular report was six pages long plus 33 pages of appendices!

What Can—and Should—Be Included in Appendices

Here’s everything that can be removed from the report’s main body and pushed to the appendix:

• Question-by-question survey responses (i.e., tables and tables of closed-ended and open-ended survey data)
• Data collection instruments (e.g., an empty copy of the questions from the survey)
• Transcripts from qualitative data collection (like focus groups or interviews)
• Meeting minutes or other official documents we might’ve referenced quickly within the body of the report
• Anything that would put our non-technical audiences to sleep
• Anything that’s not central to the key takeaway message from the report
• Anything we feel like we should include just in case
• Anything that one person who asks lots of questions might need to know about
• Patterns over time (e.g., our report’s main body could focus on this year’s data, but we might include tables that compare this year’s data to last year’s data in the appendix)

What Appendices Typically Look Like

Here’s what tables in the back of reports typically look like: Tiny font sizes, cluttered tables, and no visuals to help readers spot the key patterns.

But what if I told you our appendices could get even better than that—in under an hour??

Introducing… Visual Appendices!

Here’s my wish for your next report: Visual appendices!

5 Easy Edits to Appendices

Let’s start with those original appendices that I showed you a moment ago…

First, declutter the existing tables. Remove all the unnecessary borders and lines.

Oops! Too bare. Don’t worry, we’ll continue editing in the next step.

Second, I re-add the horizontal lines in gray rather than in black. Light gray horizontal lines ensure that our viewers can still read across the rows without distracting from the data by adding lots of dark ink.

Third, add visuals! This is the most fun part.

Fourth, apply a text hierarchy. A text hierarchy means our title is going to be the largest, boldest, darkest text on the page (followed by Heading 1s, 2s, and 3s).  

Fifth, add some plain-language text. In this fictional example, I’ve added a short introductory section. I’ve also changed the n=456 jargon into a friendly sentence: “We collected data from 456 respondents.”

3 Quick Visuals to Include in Appendices

There are plenty of quick visuals that we can include in our appendices. Here are a few of my favorite styles.

Bar Charts (or Stacked Bar Charts)

I showed you this approach already. We can build bar charts or stacked bars to visualize how many (“frequencies”).

Heat Tables (or Any Type of Color-Coded Cells)

I love creating heat tables to help readers spot the highs and lows in the dataset. Heat tables are more helpful than bar charts when our tables have several rows and columns (like these fictional tables below, which have seven columns each).

Trend Lines (or Vertical Columns)

Finally, I love creating trend lines (or, vertical columns) to show patterns over time. In this fictional example, we’re comparing how the patterns shifted between the 2012-13 academic year and the 2017-18 academic year.

The next time you’re adding appendices to your report, add visual appendices!

Bonus: Learn How to Make Visual Appendices

You’ll learn how to make these inside the Dashboard Design course.

The post Designing Visual Appendices for Your Next Report—In Under an Hour appeared first on Depict Data Studio.