Webinar recording – An introduction to data visualisation

About the webinar

Using a visualisation tool can help reveal patterns and insights not immediately apparent in raw data, and in turn allow you to efficiently share relevant data with your stakeholders.

In this one-hour webinar, James Akers, Digital Culture Network Tech Champion for Data Analytics and Insight, will show you how to bring together data from across your organisation and build charts, graphs and maps to tell a visual story.

You will learn

• The difference between exploratory and explanatory visualisations
• How to build different reports for different stakeholders and audiences in your organisation
• When to use the right graphs and charts to tell a story
• What tools are available to bring your data to life

Resources and links

Download the presentation used in the webinar

Links

• Explanatory vs Exploratory analysis –  Turning over 100 rocks to find one or two gems, vs showing an audience something interesting about the gems you found.
• Preattentive Attributes – How our brains use Spacial Memory to subconsciously processes visualisations, and how we can use this to our advantage.
• Financial Times Visual Vocabulary – A useful starting point for understanding which visualisations work for different data sets and the message you’re trying to convey.
• Information is Beautiful –  A website full of great infographics and interactive visualisations for inspiration.
• Makeover Monday – A weekly challenge where you can learn and develop your skills with passionate data people across the world. Find out more on the website or follow the hashtag #MakeoverMonday.
• Tableau webinars – Access a library of recorded webinars and sign up for upcoming events, all about data visualsation.

Reading list

• Better data visualizations – Jonathan Schwabish
• Storytelling with data – Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
• Data Visualisation, a handbook for Data Driven Design – Andy Kirk
• How Charts Lie – Alberto Cairo

Visualisation tools

The following tools have different pricing and functionality, but all can create visualisations and reports from multiple sources of data:

• Flourish
• Google Data Studio (free, but needs paid connectors for some data sources)
• Microsoft Power BI
• Tableau
• Tableau Public (free)

Further Support

The Digital Culture Network is here to support you and your organisation. Our Tech Champions can provide free 1-2-1 support to all arts and cultural organisations who are in receipt of, or eligible for, Arts Council England funding. If you need help or would like to chat with us about any of the advice we have covered above, please get in touch. Sign up for our newsletter below and follow us on Twitter @ace_dcn for the latest updates.