This was one of the best if not the best learning sessions I’ve seen at IX – immediate gains in my view and I already find myself adjusting how I present my data and I am sure others are as well.
Kristina Gubanov
Index Exchange
Data storytelling & visualization Workshop
Overview
I’ve had clients tell me their staff is “in a PowerPoint and charts rut”. Everyone who is thoughtful about the current state of affairs is seeking to improve their communications to internal and external audiences. Beehive Media provides half-day and full-day workshops, customized from its standard curriculum for helping clients become more comfortable working with and creating engaging visual experiences out of data and other content.
Bill Shander leads every workshop, which follows a well-established format, working from theory to practice throughout the session, allowing attendees to work on hands-on challenges.
In individual and team exercises, attendees work their way up from basic conceptual and communications exercises to creating full outlines and plans for static and/or interactive infographics/visualizations/PowerPoint decks/reports. They practice converting abstract ideas and data into visuals, allowing them to conceptualize and produce a complete infographic or presentation that will engage an audience and maximize impact.
Primary Takeaways
- Strategies for creating memorable and effective communications for your organization
- Creating narratives that connect with any audience, particularly when communicating “up” to leadership
- Information hierarchy and data visualization best practices
- Neuroscience and psychology behind how your audience will receive your visual displays
- Research-based best practices for design and communications
Inspired
Your people want to be inspired so they are excited to turn what they learn into action. They will see best-in-class examples from great data storytellers of our time. They will walk away thinking differently about data and what they do every day to share data with their audiences. People leave this session inspired to meet a higher bar of visual data communications.
FOCUSED
Everyone has trouble communicating with data. Many know the “what” and “why” but struggle to communicate the “how”. They will learn how to focus in on the most important components of their work so their audience can gain insights that lead to better decisions. It’s all about the story and the visual.
Educational
Everyone needs practical lessons they can turn around and translate into their day-to-day work. They will be exposed to research-driven best practices that will make them better data storytellers and able to create visualizations with impact. It’s all about visual perception, pre-attentive processing, and just doing less (stripping away, editing down to what’s most important.)
Curriculum
Introduction
The day begins with a brief “why we are here” context-setter for the day, followed by introductions.
Group Discussion
We take an existing output from your organization (a PPT deck, a report, an interactive experience, an infographic), and talk about it as a group. We first gain an understanding of the project’s goals and audience, and then discuss how it worked, what could be improved, etc. This is a very productive and fruitful conversation – and very accessible – since it is based on your organization’s actual work.
30
mins
4X4 Model
Next, Bill discusses the primary challenges communicators face trying to reach audiences in today’s world. The solution to these challenges are many, but revolve primarily around his “4X4 Model for Knowledge Content”, which is a simple framework for presenting content to people in different layers and with key aspects, including visualization and storytelling.
15
mins
