If you are applying to join The Data School or if you only want to get a good reading to improve your charts/dashboards in general, that blog may help you.
Hi, my name is Bruna Guglielmi. I am from The Data School cohort 26 in Sydney Australia.
In short, I’d recommend the book: “Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals” by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic.
As I don’t have a background in data analysis, mathematics, or anything similar, it was tough to figure out what chart to use in my visualizations besides what “looks good” or “makes it look like I know what I’m doing or talking about”. It’s a pretty ridiculous way to go through a Viz building, hey?! – And probably that’s why I didn’t pass through the first step in the interview process when I applied the first time, and that’s why this book saved me.
This book essentially goes through all the most common charts you could use to build a dashboard and explains each one of them so you know when they are necessary for an easy understanding of the data you want to show.
Besides that, it also taught me how important it is to pay attention to the load you are putting on your audience with all the visual cues in your dashboard, and I mean ALL of them. How your audience will read your dashboard, how colours will affect it, how the brain will store the memory of each thing depending on the way you approach it, it was so amazing.
The author also explains the importance of white space and even gives some tips in this aspect compared to when you are presenting something, like your breathing time and pauses so the audience can think and process the information. It was quite a good example that she could give even while writing the book; she was very creative.
Also, how these elements stand out and what will draw the attention of your audience first, which elements are more “important” so you can use them correctly and properly.
I don’t want to give much more away since I believe I’ve already given you enough reasons to give it a go and look for this book in a library (physical or online) and read it. I will just finish with the titles of the other chapters so you all get very curious (haha). The author has chapters dedicated to Think as a Designer, Dissecting Model Visuals, Lessons in Storytelling, Pulling It All Together, Case Studies, and Final Thoughts.
It was an amazing book and helped me a lot in the first days of our training lessons since I already had an idea of what our coach was teaching us.
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Hope this was insightful.
Thank you.