You have learned about how to tailor messages to audiences through different channels. For this assignment, you will create a data dashboard that uses effective data visualization and storytelling techniques.
technical writing
Description
ABOUT THE ASSIGNMENT
You have learned about how to tailor messages to audiences through different channels. For this
assignment, you will create a data dashboard that uses effective data visualization and storytelling techniques. A data dashboard represents stories in data represented persuasively and logically to an audience. Think of the dashboard as an infographic that tells data stories to people in a coherent manner through a careful selection of data, data visualization and storytelling techniques all represented in a visual infographic. These are visual communication skills that I want you to learn that you can apply when you are creating academic posters, infographics, basic data visualizations, or presenting data to your boss or your colleagues. The principles that we are using here can be adapted in different contexts to visualize data and rely on you interpreting data, carefully designing a story around your data, removing the noise, and weaving that into a coherent story into a data visualization that communicates successfully with an audience. These are key visual communication skills that you will need anywhere you go, in other words.
You will use both Ms Excel (designing the basic charts that visualize your data) and Ms Powerpoint (designing the dashboard; annotating your charts, adding McKinsey headlines etc.) to design your dashboard. You will need to find a dataset, create three charts on your own using Ms Excel, and include 2 data visualizations you've found from other sources and design these into a dashboard using Powerpoint.
NOTE: Please note that data visualization and storytelling are not the same. Just to have a data
visualization does not mean you are telling a story. You need to design the story in your data
visualization for your audience, whether that is your boss, your colleagues or a client.
HOW TO DO THE ASSIGNMENT
In this assignment, you will have to go through this sequence of steps: 1) find a dataset on a particular topic; 2) identify the stories in your dataset 3) visualize that data in the proper format (through charts) in excel 4) customize the charts in excel so they tell a story, 5) design your data dashboard by inserting and annotating your visualizations with McKinsey headlines, callouts, text, and color and adding icons and visuals and 6) write a 2 page cover memo explaining how you went about this process, the choices you made in your design to address a particular audience, and why you designed the dashboard in the manner you did.
