Whats this all about then?

In Cole Knaflic’s own words…

“To raise awareness and celebrate Black History Month, storytelling with data is collaborating with data.world, Tableau Public, #MakeoverMonday, Viz for Social Good, and Data for Democracy to ignite the imaginations and talents of our respective community members around the data sets and data stories connected to Black History. Each week’s focus is on a different sub-topic. I’ve decided to make this month’s #SWDchallenge to be centred on education, specifically the access, benefits, opportunities, and ignorance-curbing power. Create a visual with this in mind and let’s use data to recognise the importance – today perhaps more than ever before – of education in our society.”

We at #VisualisingHE HQ thought this was too good an opportunity to miss, so we have decided to pull a few vizzes together to support this great initiative.

The @storywithdata TIP:

When it comes to creating effective visual stories: be thoughtful in your use of colour and words.

and more detailed brief:

Colour, used sparingly, is one of your most strategic tools when it comes to the visual design of you data stories. Consider not using colour to make a graph colourful, but rather as a visual cue to help direct your audience’s attention, signalling what is most important and indicating where to look. Note that for this to be effective, the use of colour must be sparing. If we use too many colours, we lose the ability to create sufficient contrast to direct attention.

Words used well will both ensure your visual is accessible as well as indicate to your audience what you want them to understand in the data. There are some words that must be there: every graph needs a title and every axis needs a title (exceptions will be rare!). Don’t make your audience work or make assumptions to try to decipher what they are looking at. Beyond that, think about how you can use words to make the “so what?” of your visual clear. I advocate use of a “takeaway title”—meaning, if there is something important that you want your audience to know (there should be), put it in the title so they don’t miss it. Also, when your audience reads the takeaway in the title, they are primed to know what to look for in the data. When I’m putting a graph on a slide, I’ll use the slide title for the takeaway (and put a descriptive title on the graph). When the graph is on its own, I’ll often title with both—typically “descriptive title: takeaway.”

So what did we knock up?

Dave stacked a delicious selection of waffles highlighting which subject areas are most diverse in UK HE (It’s not all that we expected):

Dave’s interactive viz is here

Adam slid in with a viz using UCAS end of cycle data resources focusing on acceptances of UG UK ethnic groups over time, highlighting the percentage change in ethnic groups and gender since the introduction of fees in 2006.

Adams Interactive viz is here

Elena slammed it with some lesser spotted HESA staff demographics with a specific focus on the numbers and proportion of black staff and students in academia – both from the academic and research student points of view.

Elena’s viz is here

Thanks everyone,

Keep tuned for more from #VisualisingHE soon.

Dave, Elena & Adam