May 03rd -05th, 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. 

Course description

Despite the fact that books and courses on information dashboard design have been available for years, many dashboards still fail to meet users' and organizations' expectations. Users have trouble finding answers to basic data-related questions and fail to notice urgent problems because they’re hidden behind clicks, hard to notice, or possibly not even on the dashboard. Because of these and other problems, many dashboards still end up under-used or even abandoned.

Based on Nick Desbarats’ experiences designing dashboards for over 50 large organizations and teaching dashboard design to thousands of professionals, the Practical Dashboards course uncovers the real reasons why so many dashboards fail to satisfy users and organizations; reasons that go far deeper than the visual design on which most dashboard books and courses focus. Workshop participants will learn a highly practical, actionable framework for creating a system of different types of dashboards that enable users to find answers to their data-related questions far more quickly and easily, including fundamental ones such as, “Is everything O.K. at the moment?”, often for the first time.

Who should take this course

The Practical Dashboards course provides specific strategies, frameworks and best practices for those who are directly responsible for designing or developing information dashboards for employees, partners, stakeholders, and/or customers of their organization. Participants typically include business intelligence professionals, data analysts, reporting managers, software developers, user interface designers, and similar roles. The strategies and frameworks in the course are sector-agnostic and are applicable to organizations in the finance, manufacturing, technology, health care, banking, insurance, government, military, non-profit, education, and most other sectors. Senior managers and other decision-makers who consume dashboards will also find the course to be of value since it enables them to ask for dashboard designs that help them to be more effective at their jobs. The course does not assume any specific prior technical knowledge.

Major topics

• Untangling the word “dashboard”

  • The eight fundamentally different types of information displays that are, unfortunately, all called “dashboards”

  • The two high-level categories in which the eight types of “dashboards” fall:

    • “Live Data” Dashboards that are based on data that’s refreshed regularly (hourly, monthly, etc.), and that enable an organization’s employees, partners, customers, or other stakeholders to interact with the organization’s data (e.g., operations dashboard, CFO dashboard, project dashboard, etc.)

    • “Static Data” Dashboards that are based on a static snapshot of data that may never be updated, and that are typically used for persuading or educating a target audience.

  • Note that only “Live Data” Dashboards are discussed in detail in the course.

• “Live Data” Dashboards

  • Visual design best practices (color, layout, fonts, etc.)

  • The three major categories of “Live Data” Dashboards: Status Dashboards, Performance Dashboards, and Canned Analysis Dashboards

  • Status Dashboards for providing an overview of current conditions and spotting metrics that require attention (three types):

    • Entity Dashboards about a single type of entity (e.g., dashboard of employees, dashboard of transactions, dashboard of projects, etc.)

    • Area Dashboards about an area of the organization (e.g., finance dashboard, EMEA dashboard, call center dashboard, etc.)

    • Role Dashboards that contain all of the information that a given role needs to do their job (e.g., CEO dashboard, account representative dashboard, etc.)

    • Panels that should be added to Status Dashboards to maximize usefulness and user satisfaction:

      • Hidden Gotcha Panels that surface problematic metrics that would otherwise be hidden behind drill-downs, filters, tabs, etc.

      • Entity List Panels that enable users to see and act on filtered lists of employees, transactions, etc.

      • Entity Detail Panels that show detailed information about a single employee, transaction, etc.

      • Metric Background Panels that enable users to refer to static, background information about metrics without cluttering dashboards with static, non-updating information

    • How to automatically detect and flag metrics that require attention on dashboards:

      • Why conventional methods for flagging metrics that require attention (% change vs. previous period, % deviation from target, etc.) don’t work

      • The “Four-Threshold Method” for reliably flagging metrics that genuinely require attention

      • The “Metric Evaluation Pipeline”, a series of logical and statistical tests for automatically detecting metrics that require attention for a variety of reasons so that they can be visually flagged on dashboards

  • Performance Dashboards for assessing how well the organization is achieving its high-level strategic goals and identifying ways in which the organization can improve performance in the future

  • Canned Analysis Dashboards that automate potentially complex analyses behind a simple user interface that can be used by non-analysts

• “Static Data” Dashboards (not discussed in depth in this course)

  • Persuasion Dashboards for persuading an audience to adopt a particular point of view, take a particular action, etc.

  • Explanation Dashboards for educating an audience about a concept, process, situation, etc.

  • Engagement Dashboards for drawing as much attention as possible to a topic

• Implementation and maintenance guidance, wrap up.

Topics NOT covered

• How to use specific software products (Tableau, Power BI, Qlik, etc.). The frameworks and best practices that are recommended in Practical Dashboards can be implemented using most major commercial dashboard development products.

• How to create visually impressive dashboards, i.e., infographics. Only “Live Data” Dashboards are discussed in detail, and these are recommended to have a plain, minimalist visual design. “Static Data” Dashboards, which can have visually impressive designs, aren’t discussed in detail.

• Performance measurement and improvement best practices (organizational and personal goal setting, strategic planning, KPI selection, etc.), though books on these topics are recommended in the course.

Workshop format

The workshop consists of engaging, interactive presentation segments that feature real-world and fictional dashboard examples, interleaved with group exercises and discussions. Best practices are demonstrated, not just stated, so that participants understand not just what the best practices are, but also why they yield dashboards that users find easier to use and more useful. No dashboard development or other specialized software is needed by participants for the workshop. The workshop is three half-days (online) or one and a half full days (on-site) in length with breaks roughly once per hour.

We've decided to limit the online Practical Dashboards course to 40 participants in order to ensure a high level of personal attention and feedback.

Handouts, resources

All workshop participants receive the following as downloadable files:

• Practical Dashboards Cheat Sheets PDF of commonly referenced frameworks, checklists, best practices, etc.

• Practical Dashboards Sample Calculations Microsoft Excel file of fully documented examples of simple calculations referenced during the workshop

• A PDF of all course slides used during the workshop

• A number of third-party books and websites are recommended during the workshop for more in-depth information on non-dashboard-specific topics

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 5.500,- NOK or 579,- USD

The course will be invoiced after the course has been completed

Early bird

Before February 28 th, Groups (2+) will receivee 15% 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

Stedsbeskrivelse

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

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