20  Presenting Visualizations

TODAY’S GOALS

• Review principles for creating visuals for effective communication
• Understand the expectations for orally presenting visualizations

For more on this topic

Read:

• Effective visuals for Decision Making, Posit blog

WHERE ARE WE?!? Data Storytelling

• Data Storytelling is the process of creating a narrative around a dataset. This narrative can be used to inform, persuade, or entertain. It is a way to communicate the insights we’ve gained from our data to others.

20.1 Warm-up

Effective communication = effective visuals + clear narrative

20.1.1 Effective visuals

Let’s review from the beginning of semester.

• Professionalism
  • meaningful axis labels
  • figure caption
• Accessibility
  • alternative text
  • color blind friendly colors
• Design details
  • consider glyph choice
  • consider color choices
  • facilitate comparison
  • use contrasts to draw attention
• Ethics
  • Don’t mislead
  • Consider visibility, privacy, power, emotion & embodiment, pluralism, context

Let’s consider the visuals in this NYT article. What is effective? What could be improved?

Just for fun: The Pudding is a data journalism site that I admire. Feel free to explore their interactive visualizations for inspiration about how to structure and annotate your visuals.

20.1.2 Clear narrative

When preparing to present a visualization, consider the following:

• Motivation & Context
  • What is the question you are answering, and why is it important?
  • What data context does the audience need to understand the visual? (W’s?)
• Orientation
  • What aspects of the visual should you explain to provide necessary orientation?
  • Walk through guides (axes, color legend, etc.)
• Highlights
  • Hone in on one or two interesting data points and tell the story behind them.
  • Explain how the visual aspects of the viz reflect that story (this reinforces how they should interpret the viz).
• Big Picture
  • What are the overall trends or takeaways?
  • What are the implications for them? Why does it matter?
  • What comparison are you wanting to highlight?

Let’s go through how we could present this visualization.

20.1.3 Presenting Visualizations

• Speak slowly
  • It takes people some time to wrap their heads around a new viz.
• Practice ahead of time with a friend. Practice by yourself. Refine the viz if necessary!

20.2 Exercises

20.2.1 Exercise 1 - Confer with Group

Each person in a project group should make their own unique visualization. Talk with your group about your ideas for a visual.

20.2.2 Exercise 2 - Create a Visualization

Create 1 effective visualization from your project data that tells a story.

20.2.3 Exercise 3 - Group Feedback

Once you make a draft visual, share it with your group. Discuss ways to improve the visualization to make it more effective.

20.2.4 Exercise 4 - Prepare a Presentation

Prepare a 2 minute oral presentation (motivation, orientation, highlights, big picture) of your visualization.

Next week, in small groups of 4 people outside your project group,

• you’ll present your visualization (2 minutes)
• discuss as a group ways of improving the visualization to make it more effective (8 minutes)

Each of the 4 individuals will take a turn to present.