I recently attended a data visualisation course at UAL, and met a whole group of professional data visualisers. “What a luxury!” I thought, that organisations can have dedicated teams who work solely on visualising data, and it reminded me that many of us are not that lucky. In most of the organisations I have worked for, this has been a small part of the job of the people writing reports – talented researchers that generally aren’t trained in visual design or data visualisation. We could probably all boost our skills and improve engagement with our social research data in reports, presentations, social media, and more.
So, here is some insider knowledge, some of the tools that those professional data visualisers are using on a daily basis. Why not give them a go and see if you can bring life to your reports beyond bar, column, and pie charts:
*P.S. “What is the difference between data visualisation and an infographic?” you may ask. My understanding is that an infographic explains a particular story that you want to tell, while a data visualisation presents data in a way that the audience can explore to find multiple stories.
