Creating a Customer Service Visual Framework

I present a lot and have given customer service presentations in different forms and fashions for over 15 years. I usually get compliments on my presentations, but I wanted to make sure the information I was presenting was sticking with people. I needed to refresh a customer service presentation and decided to use it as an opportunity to apply the lessons from Powerful Presentations I was learning.

I had my framework in my head, but I was skeptical that with my skill level I could create something useful and decent to look at.  I am a librarian, not a graphic designer.

Begin at the Very Beginning…..It’s a Very Good Place to Start

Despite my doubts, I began.  Focusing on my outline, I had 5 areas I wanted to touch on.  I matched icons to each and then thought about what I could construct to bring them all together.  I realized that the Center Humanity portion was a target with four sections.  So that is where I started. 

Be Literal

I decided to be very literal and created a circle and wrote center humanity and put it in the center of the target icon.

This was the central point I wanted people listening me to take away.  That each person they interact with is another human being and we should remember that first and foremost in every customer service interaction.

Combine the Elements

I then put one section near each of the quadrants on the target and added the wording below.  I gave each its own color so that in my slide deck each would have a separate color to help tie people’s brains to that section. 

At this point, I had done nothing too hard, downloaded a few icons, recolored them, and added wording.  I could have stopped here and I think it would have been ok.

Pause for Reflection

But I chose to get some feedback to see if I could make it better.

At this point I paused and brought it to Office Hours for suggestions. 

Shout out to all the fabulous people who shared ideas with me and helped make this visual framework more meaningful for my presentation.

Tweak for More Impact

I received lots of great ideas and my head was spinning with all the different ways I could possibly update my visual to resonate more with my audience.  I decided to start by making the target look more like a target while keeping the center humanity in the center. 

Add More Visual Cues

I wanted to make the four other sections clearer and tie things together. I took a duplicate of the target icon and recolored it and then used the crop tool to shrink it to only one quadrant.

This is what it looked like when I was finished. 

Rinse & Repeat

I then did the same for Green, Red, and Purple.

Four Quadrants

This is what it looked like when I was finished with all the quadrants. 

I was liking where it was going and thought this would stick in people’s heads better than the original. 

Keep Centering Humanity

I was hooked on keeping the circle and plopped it on top of all the different graphics I had just created. 

This would be an easy graphic to chunk and use in my slide decks and I felt like I was on the right track.

Adding Icons

I changed some of the icons after thinking through what I was trying to convey and added them by each section. 

I was getting closer, but it still didn’t feel finished to me.

Librarians Love Words

I thought I could get away with leaving the words off and just having the icons, but it looked too bare to me.  I used Word Art and after a bunch of trial and error got the words to curve at the right angle. 

It now felt complete. 

I used the Group tool to group all of the separate graphics together and saved it as an Image.

Success!

And while I thought it was pretty great, I didn’t know if it would be helpful for attendees.  But it was! 

In the feedback, one attendee wrote that they printed off the framework and put it on their desk as a reminder to them to follow the 5 steps. 

That made my day and solidified for me why having a visual framework is so helpful.  We don’t want to just give people presentations, we want what we share to stay with people and be useful. 

The post Unlocking Creativity: Simple Steps for Non-Designers to Build Powerful Visual Frameworks 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.

I want to talk about something that’s a little controversial in the dashboard space: There are 4 types of dashboards, all of which are correct.

You might need one type.

Or, you might need all four.

Every audience and every project is a little bit different.

Our goal is to deliver the right data, to the right audience, at the right time.

Watch the Video

Here’s a 12-minute video to help you narrow down which type(s) of dashboard you need for your next project.

First, you’ll think about your audience. Are they technical or non-technical? Leaders or doers?

Then, you’ll choose a software program. Sometimes you’ll need spreadsheets (like Excel), and other times you’ll need dashboard programs (like Tableau or PowerBI).

Here’s a summary of what’s inside the video.

Dashboard Mismatches to Avoid

What if the audience has one idea in their mind… and we design something completely different??

Sometimes we get lucky, and we make exactly what they want.

Other times, I see mismatches.

Common Dashboard Mismatch: Static vs. Interactive

Sometimes the audience really wants an interactive dashboard, but we make a static dashboard.

In real projects, that almost never happens. I typically see the opposite issue: We design an interactive dashboard, but they really needed a static dashboard.

Common Dashboard Mismatch: Single or Series

Here’s another dashboard mismatch I see a lot:

Sometimes the audience really wants a single dashboard, but we design a series of matching dashboards.

Or, I see the opposite:

The audience really wants a series of matching dashboards (e.g., one for Project A, one for Project B, and one for Project C), but we give them a single overview showing all three projects combined.

The Four Types of Dashboards

Let’s be proactive and avoid these dashboard mismatches altogether.

Here are some factors to consider at the very beginning of your next dashboard project.

Technical or Non-Technical?

Is your audience technical or non-technical?

Technical audiences love data, details, and decimal places.

Non-technical audiences would rather be doing something else, like leading the project, developing new policies, or managing the team.

Time is another factor: Are they busy? Or, do they have time to explore a dashboard on their own?

Non-technical or busy audiences tend to prefer static dashboards. These short PDFs can be shared as email attachments or as printed meeting handouts.

Technical audiences (or those with plenty of time available) tend to prefer interactive dashboards. They love exploring these clickable, dynamic dashboards and coming up with their own insights.

Leaders or Doers?

Next, figure out whether your audience is mostly leaders or doers.

The leaders need an aggregated overview of the work, e.g., one dashboard for the state as a whole.

The doers need individualized, disaggregated data, e.g., one dashboard for their charter school x dozens of charter schools in the project.

If we give the leaders the disaggregated dashboards, we risk that they’ll get lost in the weeds.

And if we give the doers the aggregated dashboards, we risk that it’s not actionable enough for them to do anything about the data.

Audience First, Software Second

AFTER we narrow down our audience, then we can choose a software program.

Single static dashboards can be made in spreadsheet programs, like Excel, Sheets, or Numbers. We can sorta make them in infographics programs like Canva or Piktochart; those templates are meh but they’re getting better all the time.

Need a series of matching dashboards? Spreadsheet programs can handle those, too. I make one template in Excel and then automatically populate it with all the dozens of dashboards’ data. You can write VBA code, connect everything with drop-downs and lookup formulas, or use Slicers.

Have a technical audience? Interactive dashboards are possible in Excel (via Excel Tables, pivot tables, pivot charts, and slicers). Or, you can make them in dashboard programs like Tableau or PowerBI. Or, you can learn coding (e.g., R).

In the video, you’ll see real-life examples of these dashboards, too.

Download the Diagram

Want to download this diagram? Share it with your team, and discuss it together at the beginning of your next dashboard project. Let’s avoid those mismatches altogether.

Your Turn

Do you currently have any dashboards?

Who are they for? Non-technical or technical audiences? Busy people, or those with time available? Leaders or doers?

The post What Type of Dashboard Do We Need? 4 Types to Consider + Diagram to Download appeared first on Depict Data Studio.

In this blog post, you’ll learn from Elizabeth Dove. Elizabeth is a professor at the University of Montana who teaches art and design. She also co-directs the Innovation Factory (IF). Thanks for sharing, Elizabeth! –Ann

—–

I teach art and design at the University of Montana, and completed Ann’s Powerful Presentations course during Spring 2021.

I registered for the course because although I have advanced graphic design skills, I still thought I could make more effective presentations by working through the course’s sequential lessons of message, design and delivery.

The course was great, and I’d like to share some of what I learned! So here is one trick, one tip, and one thing to try.

Presentations Trick: Adding Perfect Shapes

Sooner rather than later you’ll need to insert a shape into your slide, and often you’ll want that shape to be a perfect circle or square.

You might have figured out how to enter height and width dimensions to get a perfect square for instance in PowerPoint:

• Insert
• Shape
• Draw a squareish shape
• Shape Format
• Enter 2.00” for height and 2.00” for width to make a perfect 2” square

But a faster way is to:

• Hold down the SHIFT key as you drag out a shape, and it makes it symmetrical in height and width, so you’ll get a perfect circle, square, or triangle, or star every time.

Hold down the shift key whenever you resize as it will keep whatever proportions intact for every shape, just identically scaling it larger or smaller.

I first learned this trick using Adobe software and was pleased it works in the Office suite too, so try it in whatever design software you use frequently if you haven’t already!

Presentations Tip: Monochromatic Tints of Brand Colors

In the Powerful Presentations course, we learned how to set-up brand colors, brand fonts, and save them as a custom theme.

This is a time-saver and adds a sense of visual cohesion to any presentation.

Using PowerPoint, I further figured out an easy approach to making title slides where you can quickly switch between colors to tint a photograph, illustration or graphic to match your branded palette. It’s a snap.

I started with this design, a grid of 12 circles, each with a different image. My design uses four colors from the brand palette of my university, which are I already setup in PowerPoint as custom colors.

I am developing a new course called “Data Arts,” which introduces basic data visualization techniques as well as the work of contemporary data artists. While I like this design for the course’s promotional material, I found it’s a little too busy and colorful to use as a background for my presentation’s title slides.

But check out this easy alternative:

Double Click or Right Click>Format Picture to bring up the Format Picture menu.

Select the Landscape Picture icon>Picture Color>Presets.

Pick from options using your brand colors. I prefer the bottom row of options, which adds a monochromatic tint of color over the image while maintaining contrast and brightness.

With one click, change to try another color.

Save and close your file as normal.

Good news – when you return to work on it days later all these choices remain, including just reverting back to your original. This is referred to as “non-destructive” editing in the digital imaging world, and it is such a great feature for experimentation and creativity, because you risk nothing!

Creating Cohesive Title Slides

I quickly created a title slide for use on all my course presentations with the same image as a background, as I think this communicates cohesion and familiarity to my students.

But each time we switch to a new section of the course, the title slides also switch to a new brand color that corresponds to that section, as follows:

This color tinting technique can be applied to apply to many image types, including screenshots and photographs, giving you a quick win for design cohesion and unity.

For additional control over the intensity of the image, try adjusting Picture Transparency in the same PowerPoint Picture Format menu.

Thing to Try

Early in the Powerful Presentations course we had a lesson on Creating a Visual Framework.

In short, the visual framework is a design element – like an icon – that is symbolic of the organizational approach taken within the presentation.

For example, a simple Venn diagram with two parts could be your visual framework, and it would be communicating that two things are being discussed as well as their critical overlapping region.

Using this icon early in your presentation and returning to it throughout the talk or the project helps your audience know where they are in the process, and lets them absorb a lot of information without feeling overwhelmed.

It helps you – the presenter – organize and clarify your thoughts since they fit this visual model.

Simple enough, right?

Well….. kind of.

It’s simple and apparent once you pick your visual framework. But that selection is critical, and I don’t think it’s easy, but I still recommend wrestling with this task.

It is important because it’s making us think visually, so that we can then effectively communicate visually. We have to tap into the most creative part of our brains and pick a visual metaphor.

This metaphor, or framework, is an iconic shape or diagram that will resonate with your audience: maybe a pyramid, a cycle, or a ladder.

Although it is a simple shape it operates symbolically to represent the strategy and approach you are taking with the presentation as a whole. It is making the abstract concrete, its art and its design, and that is tough!

Ann coached us to dive into this territory, while acknowledging its tough. We thought broadly about our topic and what we wanted to communicate and achieve in our presentation. Are we discussing a project that is likely to cycle through sequential steps, looping to renew and begin again? Then maybe something like this circular diagram.

Are you working on a project where disparate entities are operating in tandem, but directly not partnering or collaborating while working towards a shared goal? Then maybe something like these parallel arrows each making progress left to right.

Does your presentation start with a shared premise and set of conditions, but is expected to branch out in unexpected or experimental ways, somewhat unevenly? Then maybe this is network icon could be the visual framework.

Does your project start with a set of broad foundational skills, that act as a layer to support successive steps, which each get more important and also more refined as you go? Then maybe a pyramid is the right visual metaphor.

Hopefully you get the idea!

Simple iconic shapes like interlocking puzzle pieces, nested concentric circles, segmented donut shapes or hive-like hexagonal structures are all possible solutions – but each of these visual metaphors communicates a very different approach, strategy or experience to a viewer.

To get started, check out the free resources and download designs to get preliminary ideas from: https://diagrammer.duarte.com/.

How to Use a Visual Framework

Once you do the hard work to pick your visual framework, how do you use it?

Ann suggested four main opportunities, as follows:

1. Providing an Overview in the Slidedeck
2. Introducing Sections in the Slidedeck
3. Reinforcing Sections in the Slidedeck (helps the audience oriented to where they are in the presentation)
4. Consistency Across the Slidedoc (for branding and polish)

I applied my visual framework in each of those four categories, and appreciated the icon’s value in helping me organize and improve the visual cohesion of my presentations.

But I see the significance of designing a visual framework as so much more. The effort to pick the right visual metaphor transformed the way I understood my own content and how I should be teaching it.

By thinking through the symbolism of hierarchies, nested shapes, steps or cycles I found myself inspecting the content of my course in important, deep, and insightful ways.

By asking myself to design a visual analogy – this simple icon/diagram – I had to address the themes and intentions of my projects and my approach to communication early in my process.

Vital work! Try it!

Connect with Elizabeth

LinkedIn: @elizabeth-dove-406

Website: www.elizabethdove.com

The post A Trick, a Tip and a Thing to Try in Your Next Presentation appeared first on Depict Data Studio.