Last spring, I wrote about the concept of exploratory vs. explanatory data visualization. I talked about how you shouldn’t just dump a mound of data on your audience and call it a day; you should help your audience understand a…
A few weeks ago, I was facilitating a data visualization workshop. One of the participants asked a great question: What are dataviz options if your research method (e.g., ethnography) generates a lot of visuals (e.g., photographs) that aren't super interesting…
Sports geekery meets dataviz geekery in Flip Flop Fly Ball: An Infographic Baseball Adventure by artist and illustrator Craig Robinson. As a baseball fan and research communicator, this book has been on my To Read list for a while. I…
Do you ever have a conundrum and think: Surely someone else has already found a solution for this? And then you search and realize that no one has? (Or, at least, no one's posted a solution where Google can find…
Normally, I wouldn't expect to be reading an "atlas" for work. But, when Evelina Judeikyte called Atlas of the Invisible "one of [her] favourite discoveries this year!," I had to check it out. And I'm so glad I did! When…
For one summer in college, I worked in a small, independently-owned toy store. It had lovely quality and collectible toys, a dumbwaiter, and an owner who was surprisingly grouchy for an establishment that was supposed to foster joy. Twenty-three years…
The first time I remember hearing about William Playfair was in W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits. Playfair was credited with inventing the line graph, bar graph, and pie chart. WHAT?! William, where have you been all my life?!*…
I recently gave a presentation on the use of visuals in research communication. During the Q&A period, I got a really good question: How do you decide what information to present visually? I shared my thoughts then, but on the…
Until recently, I didn't know much about W. E. B. Du Bois. The intersection of my grade school education with my not-fabulous memory left me with only the vague knowledge that he was a 19th-century, African American intellectual. But then…
Every once in a while, a very small group gets overtaken by a big controversy. A couple of weeks ago, that very small group was data visualization professionals and enthusiasts, and the controversy was this: (The full New York Times…