April 26th-29th, 13.30-17.00 (Central European Time)

CGI Academy is pleased to host a data visualization workshop by one of the world’s leading experts in the field. 

While there’s been a lot of talk in recent years about designing tables and graphs that “bring data to life”, “tell a story”, or “make data beautiful”, the unfortunate reality is that many charts that are created inside of organizations are ineffective. They don’t give readers the answers they need in order to do their jobs, fail to make key insights obvious, or are just plain confusing. A surprising number of charts fundamentally misrepresent the underlying data—even when the person who created it wasn’t trying to deceive anyone. Even major media outlets regularly publish charts that are confusing, ineffective, or misleading.

Developed by globally recognized data visualization expert and educator Nick Desbarats, the intensive Practical Charts course begins by equipping participants with practical knowledge of key best practices and common mistakes, and then builds on that knowledge to enable participants to create charts that are clear, compelling, and—most importantly—useful.

The course content is solidly grounded in data visualization and visual perception research, as well as Nick’s decades of real-world executive experience, however, the focus is on hands-on learning and practice so that participants return to their desks with the practical know-how to handle all of the data visualization challenges that they’re likely to encounter day-to-day.

Who should take this course?

Anyone who regularly creates tables and graphs as part of their work, including business and financial analysts, business intelligence and data analysts, policy analysts, executives, project managers, software developers, statisticians, data scientists, user experience designers, as well as human resource, marketing, sales, operations and finance professionals. Other professionals, such as researchers, journalists, health care professionals and educators will also benefit. Experienced data professionals will benefit from the workshop since having advanced data analysis expertise does not necessarily mean that one has mastered the skills necessary to communicate data effectively to others.

The course content is sector-agnostic, and participants come from a wide variety of public, private, and non-profit organizations. No prior technical or data visualization knowledge is required and no data visualization software is used during the course, however, participants should have at least some experience creating charts in a data visualization application such as Excel, Tableau, Qlik, JMP, etc.

Course outline

• Nine data visualization myths

• The six reasons why so many charts fail

• Formatting charts

  • Color, legends, scales (five types), borders/axes/tick marks

• The “big seven” chart types

  • Line charts, bar charts, pie charts, histograms, scatter plots, maps, tables

  • Important variants and alternatives of the big seven types (50+ chart types!) and when to use each

• Making charts obvious

  • Making charts graphically obvious (i.e., obvious before the reader even starts reading titles or callouts) and minimizing cognitive effort

  • Accounting for different levels of audience graphicacy (ability to read graphs)

  • Effective chart titles, callouts, and annotations

• Specific (but common) challenges and solutions

  • Visualizing outliers, visualizing seasonal data, special considerations for charts that will be generated automatically, etc.

• What about…? (commonly asked-about topics)

  • Interactivity/filters, dual axis , combo charts, third (z) axis, VR/AR, AI, etc.

  • Chart types to avoid (radar graphs, funnel charts, etc.)

• What now?

  • Recommended resources for further learning, selling audiences on simple, well-designed charts that make their lives easier, tips for spreading good practices in your organization, “open mic” (unanswered questions?)

Topics not covered

• This is not a graphic design course and does not cover creating graphs that are artistic or eye-catching (but often less useful). The focus is on designing graphs and tables that are easy to read, unlikely to be misinterpreted, and —most importantly— useful.

• This is not a software product training course. Participants should already have a basic working knowledge of at least one data visualization software product (Excel, Tableau, Qlik, JMP, etc.). All charts shown in the course can be created in any major, modern software product, and none require advanced software product knowledge.

• This course does not teach participants how to create complex, esoteric chart types (node graphs, sunburst charts, etc.). Simple, familiar chart types are almost always the most effective choices for the day-to-day visualization needs of most organizations.

• This course does not cover dashboard design or using data visualization for data analysis (only charts for communicating data to others are covered). Please see the course information pages for Practical Dashboards and Graphs for Analysis, respectively, for training on those topics.

Workshop format

Practical Charts consists of engaging, interactive presentation segments that feature realistic data visualization challenges and solutions, interleaved with frequent group exercises and discussions, with opportunities for hands-on practice. Best practices are demonstrated, not just stated, so that participants understand not just what the best practices are, but also why they yield charts that are clearer and more useful.

Online workshops are delivered as a 70-minute prerecorded video that all participants are required to watch anytime before the live online workshop begins, and then four 3.5-hour live online sessions delivered via an online training platform. No data visualization software is used during the workshop (chart design challenges are conducted using basic illustration software or PowerPoint).

We've decided to limit the online Practical Chartscourse to 30 participants in order to ensure a high level of personal attention and feedback.

Online Platform 

The Zoom online training platform will be used for this workshop. Some organizations disallow or block certain online training platforms, so we ask that you confirm that you can use Zoom before registering. You can try joining a Zoom test session here: https://zoom.us/test

About Nick Desbarats

As an independent educator and consultant, Nick has taught data visualization and information dashboard design to thousands of professionals in over a dozen countries at organizations such as NASA, Bloomberg, The Central Bank of Tanzania, Visa, the Government of Canada, The United Nations, The University of Toronto, Marathon Oil, Shopify, and Teradata, among many others. Nick was the first and only educator to be authorized by Stephen Few to deliver his foundational data visualization and dashboard design workshops, which he taught from 2014 until launching his own workshops in 2019. Nick also frequently consults for large and mid-sized private, public and non-profit organizations, designing information dashboards for senior decision-makers and other roles.

For over 20 years, Nick has been designing information displays that enable senior decision-makers to make better, more data-driven decisions based on potentially large amounts of data, and to do so in less time and with less effort. He has extensive knowledge of data visualization, information dashboard design, business intelligence, data analysis, cognition and cognitive biases, perception, memory and learning, software design and development, and product management.  Nick's books Practical Charts and Practical Dashboards will be published in 2021.

Nick has held senior management positions at several software companies and was a cofounder of BitFlash Inc., which raised over $20M in venture financing and was sold to OpenText Corporation in 2004. In 2012, Nick was granted a United States patent in the decision-support field.

Price 7.500,- NOK or 839,- USD

Will be invoiced after completion of the course

Early bird

For orders before March 31 th, you will receivee a 1000 NOK or 110 USD discount on the regular price.

Please e-mail peter.stromberg@cgi.com for group orders or for personal assistance  

Cancellation Policy

Cancellations must be received in writing at least 4 weeks before the commencement of the seminar and will be subject to a 10% administration fee. Change of participants can be made free of charge at any time.

What workshop participants are saying

“I’ve held senior business intelligence roles for two decades and am familiar with many data visualization training programs. Nick’s course is currently the best data visualization training in the world.  Despite having discussed and studied data visualization with many people over the years, it STILL left me with the feeling of having a reprogrammed brain.  I want to go back and redesign every chart that I've ever created.  I feel so grateful to have been among the first people to experience it.” - Chris Weis, Product Manager - Data Visualization, Syntellis Performance Solutions

"This workshop was jam-packed with practical content that will have a major impact on my day-to-day work. The Cheat Sheet handouts alone are unbelievably useful." - Katarina Naddaf, Team Lead, Government of Canada

“It’s been an incredible few days and the time just flew by. I can’t remember the last time I was so excited about a training course! The Practical Charts course definitely lives up to its name and Nick is a fantastic instructor, able to teach extremely valuable, practical techniques and considerations to guide participants on how to communicate data to others in the most effective and useful way.” - Amie Das, Senior Manager, KPMG

“This course was amazing and I was buzzing after each day. Nick’s approach, sequence and examples are spot on. I’m now rethinking everything I know about data visualization.” - Rachel Trafford, Director of Organizational Metrics, University of Massachusetts Amherst

“I wouldn't have expected it from a data visualization and dashboard design workshop, but Nick's courses were inspirational. I came away with a huge number of powerful new ideas that have already enabled our organization to communicate data far more effectively to clients.” - Michel Dekker, Partner, Nova Silva BV

"This is an excellent course for anyone who needs to create clear, compelling visualizations, and I’ve already seen significant improvements in my own charts because of it." - Mike Anderson, Technical Lead, SAS JMP Division

"Nick’s approach and frameworks for chart design are purpose-driven and user-centered which, as a UX professional, I felt was extremely effective. He makes the best practices for creating useful charts easy to learn, and the activities during the workshop do a great job of deepening comprehension and retention. I would recommend this workshop to everyone who creates data visualizations or works with people who do." - Simran Singh, UX Researcher, Shopify

“The skills that I acquired from this workshop will be extremely useful for my work moving forward. I will be recommending it to my colleagues. - Dan Bianchi, Senior Product Designer, SurveyMonkey

“When decisions have major consequences, clarity matters a lot. During my time as the Manager of Contractor Support for NASA’s Flight Safety Office, Nick's workshops were instrumental in helping us learn how to use visual design to bring clarity to our graphs, tables, reports, and, ultimately, to NASA’s decisional options. Nick’s dynamic teaching style worked for us.  It will work for your organization too.” - Bill Wood,  STAR Group Solutions, LLC (formerly Manager of Contractor Support, NASA Flight Safety Office)

"Nick does a great job presenting concepts and best practices that will fundamentally change the way you think about charts and dashboards from now on.” - Bill Ravensberg, Metrics Analyst, Canada Life

"Nick is an engaging presenter and made data visualization fun to learn. The knowledge that he shared has been integral to our efforts to standardize our dashboards and other reporting and we're already planning to bring this invaluable training to a wider internal audience." - Katie Grotenhuis, Enterprise Technology Innovation Manager, WPS Health Solutions

"At the Bank of Tanzania, Nick taught us many ways to put data to work, including practical skills in data analysis and communication. The clarity and effectiveness of our visualizations have improved dramatically following the workshops that he taught here. We're now able to apply data visualization skills for gaining insights from our data, creating periodic performance reports and supporting sound decisions. Nick is able to make data visualization so practical, simple and fun that people of all skill levels will benefit from -and enjoy- his workshops." - Charles Assey, Manager, Strategic Planning and Performance Review, The Central Bank of Tanzania

"Being a consulting company, we create tables, graphs, and dashboards as an intrinsic part of almost every client engagement. However, our design decisions were left to each employee’s personal intuitions with very uneven results and, more importantly, we had no common set of best practices to use in order to provide useful feedback to our peers on how to improve their visualizations. Nick’s workshop made our people aware of the many common mistakes that people make when designing tables, graphs, and dashboards, and gave us the necessary base of knowledge to look at our client deliverables much more critically. His direct, hands-on experience makes his workshops especially impactful, as he is able to relate concepts to real-life scenarios. That was a real differentiator for us and quickly converted the few initial skeptics among our group." - Nic Picard, Principal Consultant, IBB Consulting Group

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