During this week’s Thursday discussions over at diydatadesign we’ll be talking about different strategies for visualizing survey data. Preparing for that call inspired this post. The Problem Surveys are not setup in a narrative format. So after the results roll in and it’s time to sit down in a meeting to go over the results, you could be […]
Articles
One-Pagers and Free Courses
So I decided to make a few tweaks to my workshop. Instead of offering free weekly webinars, I’m switching to offering temporary free courses. Basically I’ll be making the short animated courses I launch free for their first week. So if you follow my blog closely enough, you’ll get free access to lots of premium content. If […]
Are you THE Creative?
“Oh yeah, we have someone like you.” I remember when I first heard that. I thought to myself, “really, you have a cartooning sociologist techie and blogger who also happens to have a decade of experience in research and evaluation?” That’s not what they meant of course. What they really meant was that they had a creative. […]
Want better visuals? Make the process cheaper, easier and faster.
Saying that we should budget more money or time towards data design is like saying we should increase teacher pay. You can get a lot of nodding heads from decision makers but when it comes time to actually commit the funds… That’s a no go. So you’re left with a few options. Option 1: Keep fighting the […]
Understand. Reach. Engage. A 3-part digital dissemination strategy
Far too many research and evaluation teams prioritize high quality dissemination like I prioritize learning a second language. It’s definitely on my list of things to do one day, but it’s so far down in priority that unless something changes it will likely never happen. So instead, we keep with the status quo. We write […]
The Dashboard as a Dataset Interface
In practice we see two very different types of dashboards. The first, the literal translation that evaluators tend to latch onto, is the dashboard that gives you all the data you need at your fingertips. These are hard to build because you need to both have the data your audience really needs AND actually understand […]





