Dear research and evaluation community, we have a website problem. The problem? Many of our websites suck. I’m talking about resource sites, toolkits, organization homepages, project websites, communities of practice, association sites, learning communities, online reports, etc… As an evaluator who has been developing websites personally and professionally for 15 years now, I wanted to […]
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Designing an Executive Summary with Canva
Design is a process. So is creativity. In today’s post I’ll walk you through the process I would use to design an executive summary style report using Canva. Step 1. Simple Mini Personas Take a notecard and draw a little picture of a person. Don’t worry about the art, stick figures are fine. Then give […]
Your report is not broken.
Is nobody reading your report? Have you put tons of work into something then shared it out to the world, only to hear nothing in return? It might be easy to think that you’re to blame. If only you knew how to design a better report or create better charts, everything would be different… But […]
Information design is not data visualization.
Referring to data visualization as information design is like referring to survey design as evaluation. Yes, evaluators tend to design surveys. But there is way more to being an evaluator than designing a survey. Learning how to be an information designer requires more than learning how to create nice looking charts, infographics, presentations, and reports. […]
What’s so special about UX research with Joanna Prout
Over the coming year I hope to spend a little time on this blog showcasing some of the members of my Information Design Academy. In today’s post we’ll hear from Joanna Prout. Joanna is currently exploring a career transition from research and evaluation into the field of user experience research. I asked her to share some […]
Where we Fail
In today’s post I want to address one those elephants in the room. It’s about the biggest reason why data people have trouble producing creative work. We are all creative, but some of us have way more practice. You want to know what I’ve learned in my decade long transition from data analyst to information […]