Online Data Viz Feedback
Details
Bring a chart. Leave with a room full of careful readers on it.
Our first online session is a structured feedback hour for charts in progress. Bring anything you're working on: a dashboard for work, a personal project, a piece from One Dataset, Many Interpretations, or something you sketched that afternoon. No advance submission; just show up and share your screen when it's your turn.
Each chart gets about twelve minutes, timeboxed, in five steps:
- Set the frame: the presenter shares the chart and says two things: who it's for, and the one question they want answered.
- Silent looking.
- What do you see?: readers describe what the chart communicated: what they read first, what the main message seemed to be, where they got lost. No suggestions yet. This round tells the presenter what the chart does, not what anyone thinks of it.
- What would you change?: now suggestions, aimed at the presenter's question first. Specific beats sweeping: “the legend made me re-read the axis” helps more than “simplify it.”
- Presenter gets the last word: what they're taking away, and what they're setting aside. Both are allowed; it's their chart.
What to bring: a chart you can share on screen, at any stage: polished, half-built, or paper held up to the camera. No chart? Come anyway.
Anyone making charts is welcome, in any tool, at any level. The protocol is designed so a first chart and a fiftieth chart get the same quality of reading.
