FreshSpectrum - Practical Evaluation, Design, and Communications
Your go-to source for accessible evaluation guidance, plus comics!
My first piece of advice, stop using PDFs to share your reports. Now I know that 95% of you will not follow that advice. Even if PDFs are shown to be unfit for human consumption, they are still …
Continue Reading about If you must use a PDF, at least make it widescreen. →
Don't Panic. When I was a kid, I remember really enjoying The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was my kind of weird and short enough that kid me actually read the whole thing. In many of …
Continue Reading about Don’t panic! Just draw more cartoons. →
Time for another report design mindset change. At the most basic level successful communication requires a sender, a message, and a receiver. You, as the report designer, are the sender. The …
Continue Reading about You should build an audience, before you write your report. →
What is a spork report? I want you to imagine visiting a nice little cafe for a light lunch. You decide to order a simple salad and a cup of soup. When the meal shows up, what utensils will you …
Page count is a somewhat useless measure. When I was young, every once and awhile a teacher would allow us to bring in a "cheat sheet" to use when taking a test. I would write in tiny script so …
Continue Reading about How long does it take to read a report? →
So how do you waste data? I’ve decided to start the year by really digging into my own report design process. My hope is to eventually create a set of tools that can be used to help guide the …
