How "Real" Do Your Visualizations Need to Be? As Real as You Can Make Them!
Bill Shander
Keynote speaker, workshop leader, LinkedIn Learning Instructor focused on information design, data storytelling & visualization, and creativity
One of the great challenges in data visualization is communicating very large, very small, and even just unfamiliar types of numbers. How do you communicate, for instance, "8 million acre-feet of water"? The Washington Post did a great job of this by making the data very relatable in physical terms. Of course, the Weather Channel have taken it up a notch with their incredibly visceral 3D simulations of storm surge in recent years.
That's real-world visualization that helps an audience REALLY understand the data.
We live in the real world. We experience gravity and light and physical distance and textures and time in a way that we don't experience abstract ideas like algebra and literary criticism. Nothing teaches you not to touch the stove when you're a toddler quite like...touching the stove and learning "hot is bad" in a very tangible way!
So as much as you possibly can, you should try to make these very physical and tangible connections between your data and your audience by leveraging the "real world", in various ways, in your process.
Lesson: Visualization in the Real World
In this lesson, I talk about the power of physicality and real-world comparisons to communicate data effectively to an audience, and show an example of a project I did, including a quick progressions of ideas that led to the final concept that I executed.
Listen: Visualization in the Real World with Michelle Rial
Michelle Rial is a master at using physicality to visualize concepts. She created an amazing book chock full of thought-provoking, fun, and interesting visualizations created from real-world objects and/or hand-drawn concepts reflecting very real-world issues. She has an interesting story to tell about her process and how she does her widely recognized and admired work.
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Ask me about virtual or in-person data storytelling and visualization training for your team
Learn more about data storytelling and visualization via my other LinkedIn Learning courses.
Biopharma Nerd, AI Enthusiast, Quasi-Futurist, Information Junkie
4 年The one thing that I'd love to know about Climate Change (personally speaking and out of our intellectual curiosity) is how have the measurement tools changed in the past 100 years, where are they located, are we factoring in weather manipulation and geo-engineering into the models, and what percent of the increase in climate change is attributed to humans vs. natural cycles... do you know if this data exists?