The Newest Infographic Tools: Adding Value to Your Story with Understandable Data Graphics

Aleszu Bajak Northeastern University storybench.org

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA VISUALIZATION

BEST PRACTICES

TOOLS

EXERCISE

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: New York Times

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA RECORD

Source: Hanspeter Pfister

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA ANALYZE

Source: Hanspeter Pfister

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA COMMUNICATE

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: Hot Butter Studio WHAT IS DATA VISUALIZATION?

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: Hot Butter Studio WHAT IS DATA VISUALIZATION?

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA WHAT ARE YOU VISUALIZING AND WHY?

Exploration | Confirmation | Communication

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA INFOGRAPHIC OR DATA VISUALIZATION?

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: National Geographic INFOGRAPHIC OR DATA VISUALIZATION?

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: visuall.ly BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA DIFFERENT DATA VISUALIZATION TREATMENTS

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: Hubspot & Visage DIFFERENT FLAVORS OF DATA

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: Hubspot & Visage DIFFERENT DATA ANGLES

Narrate change over time Start big and drill down Start small and zoom out Highlight contrasts Explore the intersection Dissect the factors, reasons, causes Probe the outliers

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA VISUALIZATION

BEST PRACTICES

TOOLS

EXERCISE

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA BEST PRACTICES: DESIGN

Design last. Story first.

Sketch, sketch, sketch.

Work in grayscale.

Avoid chart junk.

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: Hanspeter Pfister BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: Alberto Cairo BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Source: Alberto Cairo BEST PRACTICES: DATA MANAGEMENT

Use spreadsheets.

Ask sources for datasets.

Note provenance.

Double check their math, and yours.

Backup between steps.

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA VISUALIZATION

BEST PRACTICES

TOOLS

EXERCISE

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Chartbuilder http://quartz.github.io/Chartbuilder/

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Google Spreadsheets drive.google.com

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Plot.ly plot.ly

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Raw raw.densitydesign.org

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA CartoDB cartodb.com

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Piktochart piktochart.com

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA Adobe Creative Suite adobe.com

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA OTHER DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS

Silk.co

HighCharts

Tableau Public

Datawrapper

Palladio

Gephi

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA VISUALIZATION

BEST PRACTICES

TOOLS

EXERCISE

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION EXERCISE

http://bit.ly/1fhDkHB

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND VISUALIZATION EXERCISE - Form groups of three - Share a Google spreadsheet - Each team member takes a different state of the union speech - Copy it and do a word frequency count - Explore the data - Find three or four words and paste them and their frequency into the spreadsheet with Year, Word, Frequency as column headers - Add a column called Count - Make a rudimentary bar chart using =REPT("|",C2) - Use Raw to build a bump chart of the data across time

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA RESOURCES

Books Edward Tufte The Visual Display of Quantitative Information Alberto Cairo The Functional Art Isabel Meirelles Design for Information

Websites Visualoop.com Visualisingdata.com Flowingdata.com Informationisbeautiful.net Viz.wtf

BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA BU STORYTELLING WITH DATA