Complex Diagrams

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I gave a fun (and useful?) lightning talk at Startupfest Montreal 2016, and Ignite Seattle, and a full-length version at the O’Reilly Design Conference, entitled Guaranteed Successful Design. I hope you find it useful and/or entertaining.

Here’s the slide deck with notes and 5 minute video from Ignite Seattle.

Here’s the full-length slide deck and 45 minute video from the O’Reilly Design Conference 2017.

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I just tweeted this:
Step 5: What graph do I use?
4: What data matters?
3: What Q’s need answering?
2: What actions do I need to inform?
1: What do I care about?

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Please enjoy content based on my Four Pillars of Visualization design principles. I hope you find it useful. The best way to reach me to provide errata and feedback is on twitter.

The Four Pillars are:

1. Purpose (the why)
2. Content (the what)
3. Structure (the how)
4. Formatting (everything else)

Here are the resources. I’ll update this page as new material comes online. Everything is free.

• When I worked for IBM I presented a five-part webcast based on the Four Pillars. The videos are no longer available, but here are PDFs of the slide decks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
• These focused whitepapers go more in-depth on how to make good design choices for pillars 3 and 4.
  3. Descriptions of various structures and suggestions for selecting the right one.
  4. A deep dive into selecting good formatting using my properties table.
• A slide deck from spring 2016 covering the process, which works for a lot of styles of communication, not just visualization.
  

   

  4 pillars of visualization & communication by Noah Iliinsky from iliinsky

• A recordings of me presenting the Four Pillars

• The first public talk I gave about the Four Pillars.

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Here are some visualization process notes from my talks and tutorials.

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Here are the various, videos, recordings, transcripts, notes, and slide decks from some of the talks I gave in the first half of 2012. With one exception, all of these are free to view or download.

January 21, ORDcamp Ignite Talk Data Visualizations Done Wrong: live lecture recording. 5:11 (quick and fun)

January 25, Strata presentation preview Design Thinking for Effective Data Visualization: online lecture. 17:15

January 27, UIE Virtual Seminar preview podcast The Power of Data Visualization: audio recording, transcript. 29:50

February 2, UIE Virtual Seminar Telling the Right Story with Data Visualization: online lecture with slides; paid. 90 minutes. (With free preview. 1:08)

February 23, Visual.ly blog guest post Why Is Data Visualization So Hot?

March 16, UIE Virtual Seminar follow up podcast: audio recording, transcript. 30:38

April 2, Where conference interviewed by Julie Steele: video. 11:55

April 3, Where conference keynote When Not to Use Maps, live lecture recording. 11:32 (this one is fun too)

April 4, Linked In Tech Talk Designing Data Visualizations, live lecture recording, with extra conversation about visualization of social networks. 1:49:12

July 12, dotAstronomy conference keynote How to be a Data Visualization Star, with Julie Steele: live lecture audio recording, with still images, slides, and time-coordinated notes twitter responses. 53:05

July 16, European Bioinformatics Institute guest lecture Designing Effective Data Visualizations, handouts, sketchnotes, slide decks (I love the sketchnotes).

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Here’s my table of properties and best uses of visual encodings. Feel free to download the PDF.

Update September 25, 2013: I wrote a whitepaper for IBM that explains the use of the table.

Please note that I’m not the first person to create a table like this, this just happens to be my take on it. I got my first glimpse at this sort of table in Jock Mackinlay‘s PhD thesis from 1986.

A really nice table comparing inclusion of visual properties/attributes in tables has been put together by Richard Brath.

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I’ll be giving a workshop on effective data visualization. Get a 25% discount when registering by using the code SPEAKER25

Hope to see you there!

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Two appearances from the Strata conference in New York this past September.

I gave an Ignite talk called Visualization Done Wrong. This video has too much of me and not enough of my slides.

Alex Howard interviewed me about my new book Designing Data Visualizations and related topics.

I’ll be giving a three hour data visualization workshop at Strata in Santa Clara in February 2012.

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I’ll be speaking at Strata NY next week. My main talk is Designing Data Visualizations, on Friday the 23rd at 11:30am.

I’ll also be presenting at the Visualization Showcase Tuesday evening, and at Ignite Strata Wednesday evening.

On Friday at 1pm I’ll be at the O’Reilly booth, signing copies of Beautiful Visualization. Not sure if Designing Data Visualizations will be available in print by then, but if it is, I’ll be signing those too. (You probably want the electronic version of DDV anyway.)

Hope to see you there!

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Last summer I gave a talk at Ignite Seattle on how to buy a practical bike. This is the slide deck for that talk. There’s no audio, but you can gather most of it from the images. The summary is below the presentation.

In general, when shopping for a bike, the best thing you can do is ride several and find one that sings to you. Details of manufacturer and parts are less relevant if you like how the bike feels when you ride it.

• At a give price point, most new bikes are going to have a similar mix and quality level of parts.
• Look for a bike where you can get the handlebar at or above the height of the seat when the seat is adjusted to your leg length.
• Low gears are critical if you live near hills or plan on carrying or pulling loads.
• You probably want at least 32mm / 1.25″ wide tires. You don’t need a suspension, or knobby offroad tires, or any tread at all, in the city.
• Your frame should have room for fenders (you can wait until September for those, but shops may install them free if you buy with your new bike).

Key points when buying a practical bicycle