Preparing for the Data Visualization Professional certificate

The certificate

At the end of 2022 I saw a data visualization certificate pass by on LinkedIn. Because I really like visualization, design and user experience, I was immediately interested. I “wanted” that certificate too! (Note. This certificate is tool-independent)

After asking around I found out that it is a fairly new (online) exam. Link to the exam --> EDF Certified Data Visualization Professional (vanharen.store) Link to the courseware that I didn’t use because it wasn’t available at the time I started my preparation --> EDF Data Visualization Professional Courseware (vanharen.store)

Since I had no reference at the time as to what would be asked, I just tried out the mock exam. I scored without any specific course or book in preparation, 50%, so I was already halfway ??

The mock exam made it clear to me that “it's not just about colors” but also a lot of other theory, such as

• ?how our brain works
• ?the different stages in the dashboard-building process
• ?which visualization to use when
• ?how to avoid clutter

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The road I walked

Courses

After that first test exam, I took several courses to prepare for the real exam. However, I already had a good basis through courses I did with Maven Analytics , the way we work every day at Inergy , and the challenges I have participated in over the past 2.5 years.

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For those who have a membership with Maven Analytics, these are the courses to go for:

• Advanced Excel dashboard design
• Think like an analyst

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This summer I started the Get Responsive course “Dashboard Design: Effective Visualization” in Power BI by Michel Dekker . Unfortunately (for non-Dutch speakers) this course is currently only available in Dutch.

In this course, I learned a lot about,

• Human visual perception, how our brain works
• Pre-attentive attributes to direct attention
• Gestahlt principles ?

• The 5 W questions to ask yourself when choosing a visual
• The 6 different visual categories (CHRTTS) with their own characteristics

• ?Avoid clutter
• Accessibility and color blindness
• The information-seeking mantra

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I had heard a lot about Gestahlt principles, and I knew it had something to do with dashboarding. But this was the first time I heard someone explain the 5 principles 1 by 1.

?Guess…? I've already used most of it ??

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After completing this course, I also happened to start an Enterprise DNA membership to delve into paginated reports. But I couldn't resist this one course called "Power BI Data Storytelling and User-Centered Design".

There was a lot of overlap between this and the previous Dutch one, but that was more than okay. It's always good to hear 'more or less' the same story told by two different people.

?This Enterprise DNA course consists of 3 blocks

• Thoughtful planning and creation process
• The rules of design composition and layout
• Navigation Best Practices and Tips

The first part is ok, but not needed for the visualization exam. In the second part, the rule of thirds was explained. A nice theory about attention and leading the user's eyes through your dashboard with some very nice examples like this one.

Course creator Alex Badiu participated in multiple Enterprise DNA dashboard challenges. During this course he shows many examples, using his own dashboards, such as using the Gestahlt principles in practice.

For example this Formula 1 dashboard to explain Similarity.

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Other topics in this course to help you prepare are

• Accessibility / Color Blindness
• Avoid clutter
• The use of context
• Better user experience

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Books

In addition to the 4 courses mentioned, I can also recommend these 4 books for preparation.

The most complete one is Effective Storytelling by Brent Dykes . I wouldn't be surprised if all 60 exam questions are answered in this book.

Some chapters are

• The Psychology of Data Telling
• The anatomy of a data story
• Story: The structure of your data story
• Visuals, setting and polishing

This book discusses exam topics that are not or insufficiently present in the courses, such as the exploratory and explanatory phases. For me this book is a reference work, I often use it to look something up. My only issue with the book is the high text-to-image ratio, I'm not a reader so I didn't read it from cover to cover.

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Another well-known book is Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic . The book focuses on explanatory analysis. So more about design and storytelling, how to work clutter-free with the right focus and visuals. And less about the psychological theory behind the user.

Some of the topics covered in the book are:

• The importance of context
• Avoid clutter with the Gestahlt principles
• Grab your audience's attention with thoughtful attributes

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The next book is the Big Book of Dashboards by Steve Wexler , Jeffrey Shaffer and Andy Cotgreave

Nearly 30 dashboards are evaluated in this book. Each chapter is about a different dashboard and each chapter has more or less the same structure

• Scenario, with the big picture and details
• How people use the dashboard
• Why this works
• Other considerations/approaches
• Dashboard designer/author comments

Chapter 1, Data Visualization: An Introduction, is the real part of the book that is useful for the exam. This part mainly focuses on the preattentive attributes, how to focus attention, and build clear dashboards.

You will not pass the exam with this book alone, but it is for sure a nice one to have in your collection.

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The last book is #Makeover Monday, written by Andy Kriebel and Eva Murray

This book takes, again fortunately, a different approach. The book contains chapters on topics such as

• Keep it simple
• Effective use of color
• Choose the correct chart type
• Using context to inform

The chapters use Makeover Monday dashboards to show best practices and pitfalls.

This book is also a lot of fun to walk through, and you will find a lot of inspiration in it, but the book does not cover all the knowledge needed to pass the exam, just partly.

Practice

Challenges

One of the best ways to learn about data visualization is to practice. There are many places on LinkedIn where dashboard challenges are held. In addition to creating your own dashboard, you can benchmark against hundreds of other builders. Learn from their comments and watch a video of the judges commenting on the dashboards like here --> (1011) Learn Data Visualization With Our Popular Data Playground Challenges - YouTube

Writing articles

In the past year I have written several articles in my spare time. I dove into the mentioned books, googled and used LinkedIn all day to understand the dashboard techniques. When you write an article yourself, you have to focus and that helps a lot.

Give presentations

The same goes for presentations, earlier this year I gave a presentation about explore vs explain. I spent many evenings and weekends understanding the concepts myself and finding the red line to deliver a 45 minutes presentation.

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The exam

When you think you have enough knowledge about all visualization aspects, it is time to go for the exam. The topics you need to control are:

• What is data visualization
• How our brain processes visual information
• What different types of data do
• How best to visualize data

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Some information about the exam:

• A first giveaway is, to be sure you really understand the test questions (you will receive a link after buying the exam ticket), most of them will return in the real exam.
• The exam exists of 60 multiple-choice questions. There are questions with only 1 possible answer, the answers have circles to click at, and there are questions with multiple answers. Those have squares to click on. Be very sure you answer multiple answers if needed
• The exam is online, open book, there are no rules like at a Microsoft exam. No monitoring and cleaning up your room.
• You have 60 minutes and you can mark questions you want to reread later. For me the 60 minutes were ok, but I hadn’t plenty of time.
• The pass mark is relatively low, 65%
• More details to answer the question “what’s in it for me or my company” you will find here --> EDF Certified Data Visualization Professional (vanharen.store)

Good Luck!! And don't forget to share your certificate on LinkedIn