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Research Communication: Lessons from Katie Porter
Sure, US Congressional representatives used visual aids before 2019.* But visuals are California Representative Katie Porter‘s claim to fame. Her whiteboard is immortalized in song, apparel, memes, and candles.
In perusing Katie Porter’s visuals, I realized that they are great examples of data visualization best practice. So, what lessons can research communicators learn from Katie Porter?
Talk about important issues.
Rep. Porter doesn’t use visuals to highlight nuanced, inconsequential tidbits that no one cares about. Her visuals focus on issues that affect lives of millions of Americans. Inflation. Drug prices. Abortion. Pollution.
Be like Katie Porter. Research communication should, as a general principle, speak to issues that matter to your audience. And visuals, specifically, can be a way to highlight the most important parts of your message.
For spoken presentations, keep visuals simple.
To create her graphs, Rep. Porter’s aides aren’t firing up Tableau and inputting thousands of data points. Her visuals are hand-drawn, or cut out of colored paper, or laid out in basic word processing or spreadsheet software. And it’s rare for her to use more than a half-dozen data points.
Also, Rep. Porter’s visuals aren’t packed with explanatory text. They do not “stand alone.” If she weren’t there to explain them, we’d probably miss the point they were trying to make. But that’s OK because Rep. Porter is there to make the point. We’re paying attention to what she is saying, not reading.
Be like Katie Porter. PowerPoint slides, and other types of visuals meant to accompany a speaker, should be designed for “glancing.”
Select a data visualization type that is appropriate for your data.
Across situations, Rep. Porter references different types of data: quantities, presence/absence, dates, text, and more. Each type of data is going to be better suited for certain types of visuals. In reviewing images of her work, I was able to find examples of:
Be like Katie Porter. Match your chart type to the situation.
Want to have Katie Porter-level visuals for your next presentation? Contact us!
*There’s a whole Twitter account devoted to them.
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I love Katie Porter and just finished reading her autography. So exciting to see her name here and how you would help clients visualize something in impactful ways, like Katie does.
Thanks for checking out the post, Yang! I read Katie’s book a couple of years ago and really liked it! Now that she’s no longer in Congress, I hope she finds new outlets for her advocacy work.