Graphicacy, numeracy, and truth-seeking as a craft.
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Learning to love the process
My career path has never been a straight line. When we’re beginning, we assume we have to choose a career and stick with it. If you’ve been accompanying my blog posts, I talk about the path I took to be where I am now - a solopreneur, creating Data Viz for a living - in a bit more detail.
I once was hired to help a group of recent graduates settle into their new roles as data visualisers, and one of them asked me what advice I’d give someone starting in the field. Here’s my advice:
Learn to love the process, not the outcome.
It is easy to look at an incredible piece of data viz online and fall in love with it. But while a well-crafted infographic, dashboard or report can help us see the underlying data more clearly, we can’t say the same about the process it took to produce such a piece. No piece of data viz happens in an instant (no matter how much tool vendors and middle-managers want to believe that).
There is often an intricate set of choices to be made, messy data to be wrangled, demanding clients, plenty of meetings and talk, and an endless count of iterations that never saw the light of day.
If you want to go down the wonderful and challenging path of Data Viz, you’ll spend way more hours in the process than anyone will ever tell you. The final piece may not even make the splash you’re expecting it to make - it may become no more than a fizzle. But if you love the process, that will keep you going, improving and, most importantly: having fun with what you have to do, even if it’s hard work.
In the spirit of learning how to love the process, all of the books I talked about this month were related to the basics we should consider to ensure we’re doing our best in our quest for truthfulness while producing visualisations.
My reviews are becoming more of a mix of what the books say intertwined with how reading them has impacted the way I do the things I do. So, this month I started by telling you about The impact an Alberto Cairo lecture had on my decision to start Data Rocks, then, I dived a bit deeper on how metric fixation was the leading cause of my burnout working with analytics for big companies, and we finished on a much lighter note, introducing the basics of Statistics and Mathematics and how they can help us embrace complexity and make sense of the world we live in.
I hope you enjoyed reading them as much as I enjoyed the process of writing them!
Truth-seeking as a craft
One underlying theme in my book recommendations this month was truthfulness or truth-seeking. Data Visualisation, the way I see it, is a truth-seeking craft. We do the work we do because we want to discover, uncover and communicate the truth of the data underlying a theme, an issue, a problem, or a question. Or at least that’s what we all should be trying to do. Life is more complicated than that, as we all know.
Data Literacy can help us make sense of the information we are offered to consume every day through multiple channels, and that’s why I believe it is so important. It is not just about making sense of KPIs and using them for business decision-making. It is about becoming better at de-codifying information in pursuit of truth - which seems to be more and more elusive by the day.
The books I wrote about this month are a good starting point for anyone’s journey to becoming smarter when faced with numbers, statistics and visual information. One point I always try to make when discussing Data Literacy is the case for embracing complexity. Complex doesn’t have to be complicated. And simple is not always better. I found this fascinating article about how complicating narratives can actually help with addressing controversial topics more effectively. From the article:
“The lesson for journalists (or anyone) working amidst intractable conflict: complicate the narrative. First, complexity leads to a fuller, more accurate story. Secondly, it boosts the odds that your work will matter — particularly if it is about a polarising issue. When people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words.”
This can be a valuable lesson for us when translating a complex world’s nuances into a visual narrative.
Other interesting bits and bobs:
All related to graphicacy, numeracy and truth-seeking in one way or another:
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Information is Beautiful made an interactive page dedicated to debunking Common MythConceptions
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Sketchplanations shows us how Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion
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And this Ted Talk video asks Can you spot the problem with these headlines?
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RJ Andrews started a fantastic series in his newsletter about the craft and process of making charts. It is a must-read if you’re into data viz. Here’s the first part: Beyond Insight
The bit where I get philosophical
A lot has happened in these past four weeks in New Zealand and in the world. It can be a bit overwhelming. I have a hard time disconnecting sometimes.
One of these overwhelming weeks ago, I found myself in awe, binge-watching a YouTube channel about art restoration. The channel is so well put together, and the guy doing the restorations in his studio shows all the steps he takes, from receiving a painting to restoring it to its former glory.
There’s this particular 4-part restoration of a wooden panel painting where he had to create a whole piece of 3-d printed equipment to achieve just the right results - because he lacked the tools to solve the problem he was faced with. It is very demanding work, and it is mesmerising to watch how much he loves the process.
Isn’t it somehow just like crafting a piece of data viz, I wonder?
If you’d like to keep the conversation going, just reply to this e-mail. I’d love to hear your thoughts!
See you again in 4 weeks!
-- T.
If you’d like to keep the conversation going, just reply to this e-mail.
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