Beyond pretty charts: the four pillars of influential data-driven organizations
A tool to assess your organizations' data-driven communications and strengthen your data visualization processes.
Are the insights from your organization's groundbreaking research lost in cluttered charts and confusing dashboards? Does your team find themselves stuck in endless iterations when creating data visualizations? Do your data visuals still struggle to inspire meaningful action?
The elusive nature of data visualization
For organizations dedicated to creating a fairer, greener, and more human world, data is often the foundation to build awareness, promote action, and increase good decision-making. Your research uncovers critical insights. These insights have the power to change minds, shift behaviors, and drive progress - but only if they resonate in a clear, authentic way.
However, quantifying the effectiveness of data visuals is a complex process. You can track metrics like report downloads, social media likes, and dashboard engagement (sometimes). But do those numbers truly reveal whether your visuals are connecting? Whether they're distinctive, accessible, and resonating with the audiences that matter most?
The larger issue I continually encounter is: how can we consistently visualize insights in a way that inspires action and achieves their mission?
Too often, organizations lack clear criteria for evaluating their data communication and processes. The consequence? Subjective feedback like "I don't like this yellow" and “can you make it a bar chart” dominates over strategic considerations.
*Who hasn’t heard a good old “can we put all the data in?”*
A new tool to assess your data visualization work
After 8 years of working with changemakers across leading organizations, I’ve identified 4 pillars of data visualization used by the most influential companies to share their insights. I’ve transformed them into a tool: the Data Visualization Score. A 16-question test that easily and quickly measures data visualization effectiveness.
As you’ll see, the test is designed to help communication teams assess how their data visualization work is performing across four key attributes:
Clarity - Are your data visuals intuitive and accessible to diverse audiences?
Distinctiveness - Do your visuals reinforce your brand identity, values, and purpose, and inspire trust?
Engagement - Do your data stories resonate with your audience?
Scalability - Can you efficiently produce high-quality visuals through standardized processes?
At the end, you receive a score for each pillar, as well as a custom report with tips, resources, and advice on how to improve each metric.
Data is one of our most powerful assets for narratives that engage audiences and drive change. But simply presenting information isn't enough.
By strengthening your data visualization identity across the pillars of scalability, clarity, distinctiveness, and engagement, you equip your organization to:
Unlock productivity through efficient processes
Make insights intuitive and accessible to any audience
Stand apart with a unique, respected brand voice
Craft authentic stories
Prioritize these areas and turn information into influence.
Gabrielle, sent from France
Worth sharing
A data-driven story from 5 years ago
Well worth the watch again: Solving the Corruption Crisis is a masterpiece of storytelling using data, compassion, and a few of brilliant techniques to bring audiences together.
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Drilled, written by Amy Westervelt is my favorite climate newsletter. The latest is brilliant: a look into how the fossil fuel industry wraps the information ecosystem.
