This 1.5-hour crash course in data visualization offers a comprehensive introduction to key concepts and techniques. Participants will engage in three hands-on exercises to master the art of creating effective and impactful data visualizations.
Learning outcomes:
- Apply best practices to make data-driven messages visually and contextually effective
- Know the basic principles of Gestalt psychology
- Apply the basic rules of decluttering
- Leverage the preattentive attributes to give the expected focus on graphs

Crash Coursegit status

Activity #1 - Cat food brands sales

Cat food brands: year-over-year sales change
Cat food brands: year-over-year sales change

Context: Imagine you are part of a business group that produces a variety of cat food brands. With numerous brands in your portfolio, as a business analyst, it is crucial to provide a concise summary of the results to communicate effectively. In this scenario, you have two optional focuses to consider.

Objective: Create a Visual to Simplify Data Communication. In order to effectively communicate your findings, use color differentiators in your visual to highlight key elements. Add titles and text elements to clarify main points and convey essential messages. Please select one of the following options to proceed.

Option 1: Lifestyle vs. Feline Brands Comparison

For this option, create a visual that compares the performance of the Lifestyle product line, which includes Lifestyle, Diet Lifestyle, and Lifestyle Plus, with the Feline product group, consisting of all products with “Feline” in their name. Employ distinctive colors to differentiate these categories effectively.

Option 2: Brand Performance Overview Choose this option to craft a visual providing an overview of brand performance. Utilize colors to distinguish between brands with year-over-year declines and those experiencing increases. Specifically, emphasize the two brands with the most significant declines, Fran’s Recipe and Wholesome Goodness.

Activity #2 - Declutter!

A frequent source of clutter in data visualization comes from unnecessary graph elements: borders, gridlines, data markers, and the like. These can make our visuals appear overly complicated and increase the work our audience has to undertake in order to understand what they are viewing. As we eliminate the things that don’t need to be there, our data stands out more. Let’s take a closer look at the benefit that decluttering can have on our data visualizations.

Let’s declutter!
Figure 3: Let’s declutter!

Context: As a Sales Performance Analyst, your main responsibility is to assess and enhance the sales team’s effectiveness by extracting valuable insights from various data sources to inform data-driven decisions and drive performance improvements.

Objective: Take a look at the chart above, which illustrates the number of days it takes to complete sales, broken down by direct and indirect sales teams

  1. How can you simplify the visual elements and make any necessary adjustments to reduce the cognitive load?
  2. Take a moment to sketch some ideas that align with a central concept.
  3. Proceed to download the data and implement one of your solutions using your preferred tool.

Activity #3 - Pay attention to detail & design intuitively

The following example employs a two-sided structure. However, clear structure is not the only thing we need for success. Attention to detail is a hugely important aspect of creating effective visual design. Let’s look at another example and how attention to detail and thoughtful design choices can improve our visual communications.

Context: Let’s assume you work for an on-demand print company that targets small businesses. One of the metrics you track is customer touchpoints—how many times someone at your organization interacts directly with a customer—both in aggregate and on a per-customer basis. There are three primary modes of connection: phone, chat, and email.

Your colleague’s original slide
Figure 2: Your colleague’s original slide

Objective: Your colleague has put together the following slide summarizing touchpoints over time and asked for your feedback. Spend a moment examining the figure above, then tackle the following.

  1. Provide feedback to your colleague on their slide design. Suggest changes and explain why, using the design principles we discussed.
  2. Review the data layout: stacked bars on the left, table on the right, and numbers in the text. Share your ideas for a more audience-friendly design.
  3. Download the data and original visuals from the provided link. Redesign the slide based on your feedback and ideas, using your preferred design tool.