Don’t Worry Be Happy
This year has been a difficult one for me, personally. My father died at the end of July and my sister died in October. Neither was a surprise, but knowing it’s coming doesn’t mean it’s easy.
Whither Goes the DataViz Tech Stack?
The very last thing you need to think about when developing your data visualization skills is tools. And yet…
Can You Visualize a Career in Data Visualization?
Data visualization is a strange career…at least it used to be. As Francis Gagnon said (in this series), “my path to information design is very common, in that it’s unique”. In other words, there was no normalized path to this profession even a few years ago, because this profession didn’t really exist. Most of us […]
On Ice Cream Thrones, And Other Made-Up Words
Starting today, whenever you get ice cream on what you used to call an ice cream cone, I would like you to call it an “ice cream throne” instead. I have invented a new word. Or at least a new way of saying something, if not really a new word. You’re welcome.
Interesting Data >>> Interesting Work
If I suggested that you create a data story out of a dataset of the chemical composition of the dust motes found in the different rooms in your house, I suspect MOST of you would not find that inspiring or interesting. You might even ask if there was another dataset you could work with.
Life, Death, Data, Story, McMuffins
My father passed away last week. I can summarize his life in a purely unemotional list of data points. He was 88 years old. He had been in dialysis more than 5 years, after his transplanted kidney (20 years or so post-transplant) finally gave out. He had every imaginable health challenge over the past 25+ […]
Bringing Humanity and Emotions Back Into Our Data
Data is cold, emotionless, objective, pure, devoid of all emotion. Except, not really, right? Because data is the output of measurements. And those things we measure are probably things that we care about, like our company’s profits, our sports team’s wins and losses, our community’s health, etc. Data absolutely is emotional. Some more than others, […]
Traffic Jams and Predictive Analytics
I’ve been at Boston’s Logan Airport for an hour already and my flight doesn’t leave for another two hours. Why? Because of a failure of predictive analytics, poor data storytelling, and a lack of institutional trust.
Deep Listening is a Super Power
On a recent flight, I quickly learned four things about my seat mate:
Who Says Data Visualization Should be Beautiful?
I’ve said this a million times and I’ll say it again: aesthetics matter. Making things beautiful is not superfluous. It can make the difference between a visual that hopefully contains insights and something that actually engages an audience, inspires them to take action, and helps them really remember the data being shared.