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Canva, Flourish, and Datawrapper, to improve your data communication skills.Expectations are changing. For decades, creative expectations for data people have been really low . A long report and a presentation was often enough” to finish up most projects. Now-a-days, researchers and evaluators are expected to design short, visual, engaging reports in a variety of formats. And then share these reports with overwhelmed audiences across multiple platforms. Very few data people were ever taught this creative stuff in school. But if you’re willing to take initiative, this isn’t just a challenge, it’s an opportunity. I didn’t learn design in grad school. My masters degree is in sociology. And there was nothing creative about my early career positions as a research assistant and data analyst. But then I started blogging as a hobby. Which pushed me to learn web and graphic design. As my creative skills grew, my day job started to morph in unexpected ways. I was still running frequencies, writing survey questions, and analyzing quantitative data but I was also getting asked to design infographics, illustrate slide decks, and take on all sorts of other creative projects. Teaching myself design created so many opportunities. It led to promotions, new positions, and, eventually, a successful independent consulting business. And what I’ve learned teaching this creative stuff to other data people, is that it doesn’t just work for me. It can work for you too. Learn design and you can expect the unexpected wins. These are the first steps and I’m sure I will get better at information design as I practice and get feedback. However, even this was enough to get asked to teach this internally next year. After I showed a few examples to a friend from my university who also runs a small consultancy that provides services mostly to government agencies he invited me to teach this to his staff (which I’ll get paid for). I seriously didn’t expect that when I started learning how to make writing/data easier to read. -Workshop Participant We started out with a single evaluator for one large grant, and in the last year we have grown to a team of six people evaluating grants across the institution. My team’s early reports were typically about 25 pages of narrative describing seven survey responses. I did my best to untrain them from their years of writing courses, but it wasn’t until I shared some of your cartoons and your book on report writing that the light really went on. Now they create smaller, more digestible reports and infographics. Program leaders are very happy with the recent work coming from our team, and somehow I seem to be getting all the credit! -Workshop Participant Ready to level up your data design skills? On the courses page you’ll find my FREE Beyond the PDF course along with upcoming live workshops. If you want a private workshop instead, just follow the link! Course Catalog Private Training From the blog Events On this page I’ll be listing all upcoming live events, along with the relevant registration or RSVP … Continue Reading about Events → We are story finders. When I started drawing comics, back in the early 2010s, there were these really popular animations … Continue Reading about We are story finders. → Who is the Hero? Storytelling Methods for Data People. Good stories always have heroes, even data stories. So who is the hero in your story? So … Continue Reading about Who is the Hero? Storytelling Methods for Data People. → 128 Evaluation Cartoons for Presentations and Blog Posts Looking for an evaluation related cartoon for your next presentation or blog post? Well, over the … Continue Reading about 128 Evaluation Cartoons for Presentations and Blog Posts → What is Card Sorting? UX Methods for Data People Card sorting is a user experience research method useful in discovering how people organize and … Continue Reading about What is Card Sorting? UX Methods for Data People → How to become a data designer. Ever wonder why some data teams deliver really nice looking reports while others seem like they’re … Continue Reading about How to become a data designer. → How to create a scatterplot in Canva! The scatterplot is one of my favorite graph types. So how do you create one in Canva? Just an … Continue Reading about How to create a scatterplot in Canva! → My Cartoon Illustration Process – Realist Evaluation Comics Back in 2017 I was commissioned by the RAMESES II project (funded by *NIHR) to draw a series of … Continue Reading about My Cartoon Illustration Process – Realist Evaluation Comics → Evaluation versus Monitoring Today’s post started as a comic request and turned into a Q&A. Here is the question that came … Continue Reading about Evaluation versus Monitoring → Canva Templates – Inspired by the Nature Conservancy Trying out a new series this week. The idea is simple, I find some inspiration and then use that … Continue Reading about Canva Templates – Inspired by the Nature Conservancy → Evaluation Ethics Fails, 8 illustrations I’m sick this week, so instead of writing something new, I thought I republish something valuable … Continue Reading about Evaluation Ethics Fails, 8 illustrations → Building Your Creativity Toolkit Creativity is not a talent. It is a way of operating” These are words that came from comedy … Continue Reading about Building Your Creativity Toolkit → Footer Data Design Made Easy My newsletter gets delivered to over 2,000 evaluators and researchers each week. In every email I share resources designed to help you become a more confident data designer. 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