Feedback

Criticism between two slices of praise doesn't taste as good as it looks.

Whether you’re giving feedback or in need of it, this blog will help you navigate how to approach it constructively and collaboratively to get the most out of the experience.

Don't. Or at least, don't start there. That’s how I (eventually) responded to a question about feedback during a recent Chart Chat conversation with Jeffrey Shaffer, Steve Wexler, Andy Cotgreave, and Amanda Makulec. When the topic was raised, my first thought was that you should start by as

Do you know how to make your praise meaningful? Check out these five principles.

“Feedback is not about sizing people up. It's about helping them grow. 78 studies: criticism is more motivating when you (a) meet face-to-face; (b) compare behavior to a standard, not to others; (c) suggest changes to make. People want to improve when it's clear that you care.”

Your graph is garbage. No productive conversation has started with words like these. However, in the past week, I’ve read them (directed at someone else’s data visualization) and had a similar comment posted to me about a blog article I published in 2012 (in which my words were referred to as “rubb

Soft landing, firm impact: Practical tips on how to give and receive meaningful data visualization feedback Have you ever wished for a common-sense playbook on what to do when someone shows you a data visualization and asks you those four magically frightening words, “What Do You Think?” Or, have you ever built something for someone, shared it, asked for feedback and all you heard was “this is fine,” and left the discussion unsure whether it hit the mark or would end up in the pile of unused dashboards? If so, this session is for you. You’ll walk away with powerful approaches on how to give truthful feedback in a caring way as well pull out what your stakeholders really think about your creations.

The primary struggle with dashboard development is not identifying the right key performance indicators, building the graphs in your favorite software, or even getting people excited about the idea of using a dashboard. That’s all a cake walk compared to managing people and their reactions to the dashboard. Let me tell you a couple stories […]

We recently kicked off a new 10-week course, which has been really fun to develop, because it’s both longer than our typical workshops and spread out over a greater amount time. Combining these aspects means that we get to cover more topics related to data storytelling and go into greater depth on

Author’s note: Thank you to Naomi Robbins, Eva Murray, Chris Love, Luke Stanke, & Steve Wexler for reviewing and providing helpful input to this blog post. That doesn’t necessarily …