Hi! I'm Emma, a junior working toward my BFA in Graphic Design at SUNY New Paltz. Besides design, I love reading and playing with my two dogs. :)
During my semester in Data Visualization, I have learned how to navigate Google Sheets and work with data in Tableau. In this portfolio I will explain how I have grown as a designer by learning to tell stories with numbers. I will show my progress with individual projects, including one that I consider to be my best work (below).
During this semester, one of the hardest things for me to master was finding individual stories in large datasets. At first, I was overwhelmed by endless columns and rows of numbers. Learning how to use pivot tables in Google Sheets and create quick charts in Tableau was a weeks-long process, but once I got the hang of it I found it much easier to find stories. Also, I was originally nervous to use data in combination with my other graphic design skills. By the end of the course, I am now comfortable with visually crafting charts and tables to create a more understandable story.
This is one of the first data visualizations I created in Tableau. If this were to be used as a graphic in an article about clean drinking water (for example purposes!), I would definitely craft it more and add more emphasis to Eritrea. Right now, there is not a clear takeaway message because I was not yet comfortable working with data to tell a story.
In one of my later projects from this semester, it is clear that I learned the importance of hierarchy. Without the big red and green numbers, the story about Papua New Guinea's lacking gender equality and family planning information would be unclear. Here is a link to the interactive version of this dashboard.
I have also found that in general, my data visualizations have become a lot more human-centered. In my beginning work, I was focused on pulling out numbers without really connecting them to a larger story. I have grown in my understanding of when to appropriately use certain charts, and also when it is useful to create an interactive dashboard instead of a physical printed piece.
Here is another early data viz I created. While I did annotate the righthand section to explain what it means, the story is again not clear at a glance. Without more context, it is hard to understand what this shows overall. Also, the bottom axis is not clearly labeled.
This dashboard, though not fully crafted, shows a much clearer story. There is a subheading to introduce the topic, and color emphasizes the fistula countries on each visualization. Here is a link to the interactive version.
One project which I feel best represents my best work this semester is a magazine spread data visualization called “Obstetric Fistula: A Women’s Health Crisis.” I sourced the data from Makeover Monday's collaboration with Operation Fistula. The final spread details what obstetric fistulas are and how they affect women in developing countries. I am proud of how I combined data, writing, and graphic design crafting skills to create a comprehensive story.
One of the hardest parts of this work was finding a story within the original spreadsheet. Since the data about obstetric fistulas from Makeover Monday is a bit spotty, it was difficult at first to find ways to show just how problematic this issue is and why it is happening. I enjoyed researching more about the topic and finding interviews with women who have survived and/or are currently living with this injury, and I think the human-centered writing coupled with illustration helps the story feel more human rather than just centered around numbers or graphs.
There are several skills and programs that I used to create this project. I cleaned up the original data in Google Sheets for use in Tableau, “interviewed” the original spreadsheet to fully understand the data, wrote out a storyboard, and sketched several dashboards as preparation for the final spread. I exported scatterplots and maps from Tableau into Adobe Illustrator to craft the final. In the future, I hope to expand upon my skills in Google Sheets and Tableau so that searching for a story in datasets becomes easier in the future.
A few key steps in my process are shown below.
A storyboard of the ideas and statistics I wanted to include in my final project. I did not use all of the ideas here in the end product, but this process really helped me focus in on the topic.
Sketch of a dashboard before working with the data in Tableau
My Tableau dashboard before exporting to Illustrator