Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Data Viz Today podcast host Alli Torban talks design, dataviz, and more
291 Plays3 years ago
https://policyviz.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/PolicyViz_EpisodeNo203.mp3
The post Episode #203: Alli Torban appeared first on PolicyViz.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Guest Overview
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome back to the PolicyViz Podcast. I'm your host, John Schwabish. On this week's episode of the show, I have the one and only Allie Torben joining me on the show. If you listen to DataViz Podcasts, which you must because you're listening to this podcast, you probably know Allie from her podcast, DataViz, today. And so I invited Allie over to talk about her own work, talk about her background. We talk about
00:00:38
Speaker
her data art, her data patterns, her illustrations. And we sort of have this plan to talk a little bit more about what DataViz will look like going into the future, but we ended up talking about a whole slew of things. We talked about tools, we talked about DataViz generally, we talked about our approach, we talked about our processes, and we talked about our day-to-day lives and what it means to sort of do all this DataViz work. It's a really interesting,
00:01:06
Speaker
conversation. This same episode is being posted over on the date of his today podcast. So you can listen to it here. You can listen to it over there to get a different opening, different introduction from Ali. Uh, it's really interesting conversation. I hope you'll enjoy it. So I'm just going to get right to it. So here's my conversation with Ali Torbin and I hope you'll enjoy it. Hey, Ali, very excited for this date of his today policy of his podcast joint production. How are you? Great to you, John.
00:01:36
Speaker
We've put this off for a long time, so I'm glad we're able to do this. So we have a kind of unique plan, I think. So we're going to ask each other a question, relatively same question, and then we have a plan for a longer discussion. Yes. OK, so let's talk.
Allie's Freelance Work and Tools
00:01:52
Speaker
I'm going to go first ask you about your day-to-day as a data viz, freelancer, blogger, podcaster, illustrator. You've got all these different things.
00:02:05
Speaker
So what does your day to day look like? I mean, maybe pick like your busiest day. What does that look like? Okay. So I'm a freelance information designer, DC area, just like you.
00:02:19
Speaker
which means I work on contracts that last anywhere between a couple days to a few weeks to a few months, small businesses, big businesses, and I just help them communicate visually. I feel like that's the best way to describe it, since like you said, it's a wide variety of things.
00:02:38
Speaker
Depending on what kind of client I'm working for, recently I did a infographic for the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and that was visually showing an idea, a process, and I illustrated that. So when I do illustration type things, I'm using
00:02:57
Speaker
my iPad and Procreate, and then I go back and forth between my computer and my iPad. And then I do traditional data visualizations also. So another project that I worked on was for a large company, a big retailer, visually showing with Tableau an interactive dashboard about all their inventory. So it was a very similar but different skill set.
00:03:22
Speaker
And then I'm also working for Ben and Becky Jones at dataliteracy.com and helping them communicate data literacy concepts to a wider audience. So I'm blogging, I'm writing, I'm illustrating a comic for them to show data literacy concepts. So that's kind of my day to day. It's all over the place using different tools, but the underlying thing is that I'm helping people communicate visually with
00:03:52
Speaker
data and information. Do you have one of those that you prefer over the other? Like you had your series on like the wallpaper which I love and I just like that's sort of like the huge spectrum of possibilities like from data comics illustration to infographics like a tableau dashboard like just something like what makes your heart happy.
00:04:11
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question because there's things that I can do for money, like good money, and then there's things that I can do that is more, I guess meditative is the right word because I picked up the illustration stuff because I've always been kind of interested in it.
00:04:27
Speaker
Uh, during the, when the pandemic first started, I was getting a lot of anxiety and I discovered illustrating was on my phone. I downloaded the procreate app on my phone and creating these little illustrations, the database inspired wallpapers was a really great way for me to, uh, not be sucked in by doom scrolling on Twitter.
00:04:49
Speaker
Having panic attacks, watching CNN. So it really became a meditative practice for me, creating illustrations. And that's when I really get lost in, you know, I lose track of time and I really feel fulfilled after I create a illustration or some sort of data art piece. And I think I've been trying to find a way to bridge the gap between meditation and communication.
Storytelling in Data Visualization
00:05:18
Speaker
communicating visually in those two ways, how do you kind of bridge that gap where someone would pay me to create an illustration, right? So you got to find a way to use illustration as a way of communication. So if I had to choose a favorite, I think this kind of data comic thing I'm doing for data literacy is really a beautiful marriage between the two.
00:05:39
Speaker
It's me illustrating, which I love to do storytelling, but also communicating important information to people that can have an impact. So that's what I'm really loving doing right now. That's great. Are you a comic book?
00:05:55
Speaker
No, I'm not. Not at all. Not at all, which is very funny. I think other than XKCD, I don't really read comics, but it is an amazing field. I went to the library and just took out all the books they have on comics and they have, I mean, I'm sure you know that it's a very rich field that I can learn from, but yeah, I wasn't really a big comic reader beforehand.
00:06:20
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I'll just, I'll just say to wrap this, this section up. So I remember seeing Scott McCloud.
00:06:26
Speaker
at the first tapestry conference give like the closing keynote and remind you remind me of it because Ben Jones was also there and I think we like sat next to each other and Scott McLeod's closing keynote was like one of the most amazing talks I've seen live and you know his book is like just for me it was eye-opening to see like oh there's like a science behind this the way you do it and his the way he presented was both
00:06:50
Speaker
like his slides sort of ran horizontally and then they ran vertically because he's sort of telling these stories through the comics and the comics don't always run and the panel's like left to right ABCD and they can run in different dimensions and he did that within the presentation so okay so before I before I flip that let me let me then ask this so when you think about these comics
00:07:10
Speaker
Are you thinking like a linear storytelling or are you really, cause that's, I think how we think about like database is like this line goes up. Um, but you have more freedom with the comics. So like, do you change your, your thought process with stories? Yeah. It's Scott McCloud has many books and I skimmed through many of them from the library and.
00:07:30
Speaker
One of the techniques he suggested was you have your main plot storyline, the intro, and then you have the conflict and the resolution. So you have to think in those terms, like general storytelling terms. But then you also have to think about what you're going to show visually, what you're going to show with words, and then what you're going to show as a combination of the two.
00:07:54
Speaker
And then what view you're going to show within each frame, how much time you're going to skip within each frame. So it is very complex. And in my mind, you know, I don't have that much experience doing it, but the way that I find myself thinking about it is almost like.
00:08:13
Speaker
Um, in snapshots of time. So here's the quick view. Here's what I'm trying to communicate visually and through words in this snapshot of time. Then I'm, what am I going to show in this snapshot of time? Um, and how am I going to do it very efficiently? So it sits within a page. So what I like to do is write out all the information I need to convey in this.
00:08:37
Speaker
And then what the story is going to be, like the characters doing things to convey that information. And then I go back and I circle the things that I'm going to show visually and then the things I'm going to show with words and with both. So it is, you do have to think quite differently than you do when you're creating a data visualization.
John's Roles and Consulting Work
00:08:58
Speaker
It sounds like a lot of planning.
00:09:00
Speaker
Yes, it is. It's very front loaded with planning and just like a podcast, right? We don't even need to get into all that. We do a lot of planning and scripting and editing and everything and then you get the 20 minutes beautiful package at the end. You mean you don't just like flip on the microphone and do a podcast and you're done?
00:09:20
Speaker
Yeah. So that's, that's my day. If I may now hear about your day, because I think you are in a super unique situation where you are doing your own research, creating your own data visualizations for your research, but then also like a whole other side career of helping other people get better at their data visualizations. So what does your day even look like?
00:09:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's a little crazy. So I've got an almost full-time job, so I'm not quite 100% at the Urban Institute. And at Urban, I split my time. So half of my time is doing research, and half of my time is in the communications department. So it's an interesting split. A lot of people ask me, why don't I just do policy vis consulting stuff full time? But I really still identify as a researcher, as an economist, and I really like working
00:10:10
Speaker
not only with the people that I work with at Urban, but also just like on those topics that I just that are really important, right? Like a lot of the work I've done during the pandemic was on nutrition issues. So like, how do we feed kids from low income households who when they're in school, they participate in the school breakfast program or the school lunch program and they get that's how they you know, that's how they're getting meals.
00:10:35
Speaker
What do you do when there is no school, right? Like how do you get food to these kids? And how do we do so efficiently and you know within budget and you know, lots of different questions And then I've been doing a lot more research over the last six months or so on disability issues. So it's an issue and
00:10:53
Speaker
A topic area that I worked on a lot a few years ago and it sort of gotten a little quiet on the policy front and now sort of come back. There's a lot of questions, obviously on sort of the social security side of things, which is where I spent my early career working on. And now where I'm finding is this discussion of the intersection between people with disabilities and food insecurity. So how do we look at those, those two topics together?
00:11:18
Speaker
But then there's the whole database side of things. And I would say there's a lot of overlap between the stuff I do at Urban and the stuff I do at PolicyViz. So it's a lot of same sort of thing that you mentioned, a lot of consulting. I'll say that more recently, I'd say, especially during the pandemic, it's been a lot of like critical reviews for people and organizations, which I really have come to enjoy. So they'll say, look, we have this,
00:11:44
Speaker
Internal report or we have this series of web pages or we have this tableau dashboard. Can you give us feedback? And so I'll go through and sort of basically write up a report and I have a kind of a system set up for that so like I have a kickoff call so I can understand I think you know you and I probably see I died a lot of this like
00:12:03
Speaker
It's one thing to be like, can you critique our dashboard or our visualization or our infographic or our comic, right? But like, if I don't know what you're trying to get across or who your audience is or, you know, what the most important data points are, it's like critiquing a visualization just for the sake of critiquing it isn't particularly useful. Um, I say that even though I've been doing these like database critiques on my YouTube channel, like
00:12:29
Speaker
But, you know, okay. But it's more important to get that audience piece, I think is the most important part.
00:12:35
Speaker
I had no idea that, um, that this whole critique thing was a, I don't know, a business. Yeah. And it's great because what I really like about it is it empowers the organization and the people in the organization to be better at their visualizations and going forward. So they could hand something to me and say, here's a bunch of data. Can you make something for us?
00:12:59
Speaker
And yeah, I could do that. My basic toolkits, I think as most people know, is like Excel, R, and Tableau. And I'm by no means an expert in Tableau. So usually I'll call up another Tableau person to help me with the Tableau stuff.
00:13:15
Speaker
I actually like the critique part because I can say, look, let's examine this particular visualization. And here's what I would do differently. Here's where you're not telling the right story. And once we have, I'll deliver the report, and then we'll have a long call. And what it does is empower them to say, OK, I can see why this one thing that John mentioned is a better way to do it. And then they can carry that forward into all of their other work.
00:13:40
Speaker
So I find it really rewarding because it's, what is that saying? It's like, teach a person to fish, give a person whatever it is. Yeah. You know that saying, give a person a fish. And I read something a couple of weeks ago that it's not just about teaching someone to fish, but it's also teaching them to fish and giving them the fishing rod. So you need to give them the tools. So as an example, I'm working with a client that does, they're a private sector, they do reviews on pension programs.
00:14:09
Speaker
And so I can discuss their visualizations and what I think is good and bad about these visualizations.
00:14:17
Speaker
But we had long discussions early on about the way that they were presenting them in these long PDF decks was cumbersome. It was difficult to move the data from one thing to another. And so we talked about lots of different toolkits, and they ended up, through long conversation we had, they end up going to Flourish. They're using the Flourish tool. And so what they can do with Flourish is they can basically create kind of a stepper
00:14:44
Speaker
So it's kind of like a step or a slide deck, but it's in flourish. It's interactive. So they get sort of these additional components. And so they have this new toolkit. So it's not just about saying this bar chart would be better off as some other chart, but it's also saying.
00:15:01
Speaker
this bar chart would be better off as a line chart. And it would be better if you didn't, you know, weren't doing, I don't know, the small multiples in Excel because you're doing 40 of them and you're updating it every week. That's not an efficient use of your time. Let me show you how to do this in R or Dun and Tableau, or let's figure out how to do it and flourish. Um, so that's a really interesting combination of it's like strategy training and delivering a product.
00:15:25
Speaker
Yeah. And it's, and it's at the end of the day, it's like, you know, they're still going to create it. I'm not going to, you know, I can help them create it, but they're going to do it. And so once our relationship ends, I hope that they're sort of off on their own and ready to, ready to go. How do people find you to do that work? Or like what, if somebody wanted to get that work done, what kind of words are they searching for you think? That's a really good question. And like, I bet if we had like Cole.
00:15:52
Speaker
an athlete on, on chatting with us, she would know like the best, like best marketing. I'm like really terrible at
Writing and Future Projects
00:15:58
Speaker
that. But, um, I think as you've probably experienced too, the, as you put out content and you say, I mean, I think I've been trying to, you know, focus on this word critique a little bit and, and redesign and empowering. And I think there's just like, there's key words around data and data viz and data communication.
00:16:17
Speaker
I mean, I find a lot of my work comes through word of mouth, and I have, especially through my work at Urban, where I do very similar sorts of things, but Urban has, because it's a nonprofit, and nonpartisan nonprofit has some specific funding principles. So this is sort of the weird split, right? Firms that don't fall under those funding principles, that's where I'll do the policy as well. So that's sort of the split.
00:16:44
Speaker
But, you know, I'll do work for, you know, research programs where they'll have like a cohort of research teams that they're guiding through. And a lot of these programs, through different funders and different universities, they're teaching, especially young scholars, dataviz and presentations and how to write and how to communicate and how to talk to the media. And so there's all these different pieces and how to do research, right?
00:17:07
Speaker
how to do better at your statistics and your aggressions and your mapping and whatever it is. And so I'm often just a component of these programs that are being put together. And so, you know, I'll do one for University of such and such and then University of so-and-so will email me and said, Oh, I heard that you're doing this program, you know. So, I mean, that's the best, right? Like, I mean, I'm sure you've had this experience, right? Like, that's the best feeling when someone emails you and said, Oh, I heard from so-and-so that you do a great thing. You know, we'd like to, we'd like to bring you on. That's,
00:17:37
Speaker
I feel like that's better than like, I saw your website or I saw this thing, do you do this? Yeah, they're a little bit more committed to the relationship rather than, hey, are you going to be cheap? Right, exactly. Yeah. And so the days are a bit hectic, I would say. I would say during the one thing about the pandemic that has been a little bit advantageous work-wise, not like work balance-wise, work-life balance-wise for sure, but like not having my hour commute.
00:18:07
Speaker
into DC, you know, I can jump on the email at 7 a.m. and, you know, bang out 30 minutes of email and then go and work out or, you know.
00:18:18
Speaker
get the kids to wherever they have to go and then sort of come back. So there's that like early morning part where my workflow is just like, I like to kind of like bang some easy, like the low hanging fruit stuff, like bang that out real quick and then get into the rest of the day. So I don't know how things will change for me once the world opens back up and I'm back in the office.
00:18:39
Speaker
Kids are back in school, hopefully, crossing fingers, we'll see. Do you have another book plan? Because it seems like writing a book is so much work. I don't know why anybody does it, actually. Yeah, I don't know. It's like owning a house. You just bought a house, right? It's the same thing. Why does anybody ever buy a house? It's just like, yeah.
00:19:01
Speaker
more headaches, but I do love your book. It's kind of like the, I don't want to say dictionary, but almost like a dictionary for database where you can just go in and get some inspiration, understand better data visualizations is what we're talking about. And it's really great that you can get inspiration, but also learn about the chart type and see examples. So I can tell that it took so much work to put together.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah, and funny that like before we got on this call is emailing with my editor because we're like fixing some typos and like have to go through back to some images and like renumber them. Yeah, thanks. Thanks. Yeah, the book, I think turned out longer than I thought it was going to be. But yeah, it is that sort of encyclopedia of graph types. I have a couple of ideas for next book, but I don't have the
00:19:47
Speaker
energy. You know how it takes you time, but I actually, I'm going to turn this back to you. So like, do you see a book in your future? Like, and specifically, I'm wondering, like, do you see like a date of his comic book in your future? Maybe. Yeah. How to talk to Ben about that. Yeah. And I just like, I think like SKCD seems like the only one that's would be like even close. Yeah. There, there are actually, I mean, there are like drawing ones.
00:20:17
Speaker
Yeah, more like funny puns, date of his puns, like real? Yeah, I think that if I were to do something, I think I should, I think maybe you can give me some advice on this, but if I'm going to make a book, it should be on one of the topics where I feel very
00:20:40
Speaker
motivated and I enjoy doing it and I think from your earlier question what's the kind of work that kind of gives me the most joy that kind of thing is the is the thing so I think if I were to do a book it probably would be around something where I could do a lot of illustrations yeah I mean I think the key is to for me at least it's something that
00:21:03
Speaker
Yeah. Gives you joy because you're going to spend a year or two writing it and like, you don't want it to be like something that you hate and something where you have, you know, I think it's like where you have something to say and where you can add value to people, especially in our line of work, you add value to people, how they're going to do their database work. And I think your comics stuff and your illustration just more generally like.
00:21:23
Speaker
I think those have those elements to it, right? Like, first off, it gives, well, I'll speak for myself. It does give me joy to see those wallpapers. Like, it's just, it's just great. But I think, you know, you have things to say about DataViz and the process and how people do their work. And so there's value there. And I think to help people do their own DataViz, I think there's a niche there that I think you can fit into. But I would say for anybody thinking about writing a book, like be prepared.
00:21:51
Speaker
Because it is. You have to really love the topic, right? And be organized. That's the other thing. And I have on my little index card here, my day-to-day index list is organize all the images from my book. Oh, gosh. Because I have the full list, and then some were edited, and then there were typos fixed, and they're all over the place. And they're not in one directory in it.
00:22:16
Speaker
I try to be organized, stay organized. You did a lot of managing files. Well, I really loved hearing about your day because I was always wondering kind of how you balanced all your stuff, but I also have a second burning question that I really, really want to talk
Future-Proofing DataViz Careers
00:22:33
Speaker
to you about. Yeah.
00:22:34
Speaker
So I was listening a little back story, listening to a podcast called The Business of Authority. And they were talking about, one of the hosts is a web developer. And he was talking about how some careers have expiration dates because you get your career so wrapped up in a particular tool that, you know, eventually tools
00:23:00
Speaker
go out. What is it that Jeff Bezos, I think quote where he said, someone asked him, uh, what do you think is going to be different in 10 years? And he was like, what's not going to be different. And so at the date of his designer, everybody wants to talk about tools, right? And everybody thinks it's kind of about the tool. And I was thinking, well, how am I going to most efficiently
00:23:27
Speaker
future proof, my career and kind of what are the other skills that are super important for me to be focusing on honing, not like getting secondary, but focus on honing. So when Tableau or sorry, I don't want to name any names, but like any, any tool really, any tool goes, goes out or people move to the next tool. Right. Right.
00:23:50
Speaker
What's, what are the skills that are going to make me be a successful date of his designer right now on earth or 10 years from now on Mars? It's a, it's a, it's a great question because like, if we think about our current toolkits, right, from Tableau to Excel to JavaScript to flourish to date, whatever, whatever the tools are like.
00:24:18
Speaker
Eventually augmented reality, virtual reality are going to be a thing, right? I mean, I think to date we sort of like, it hasn't quite worked. I mean, maybe some of the augmented reality or like the weather channel where they have like the water flowing up or like, that's going to be a thing. And like, I have no idea. Like I'm not going to go learn virtual reality tools. I just don't see that.
00:24:39
Speaker
But I think the core of communicating data will still be similar. Like the central tenets of like, how do you communicate your message? How do you explain to people how to use different graphs?
00:24:55
Speaker
And so I guess, you know, my question to you would be like, in terms of a lot of the stuff that you're doing, because it's illustration, like, I feel like the illustration will always have a place. And I feel like we have this like real run up on like digital tools. And then there was this big pullback or I guess pushback really, from a lot of different parts of the field to say, why can't we just do more drawing, right? And it's like,
00:25:20
Speaker
you and SKCD is an example and Stephanie and Georgia doing deer data and data sketches. And there's just like a lot of projects. So like, do you think even 10 years from now when you're on Mars that like illustration sketching will be such a central part of the field? Yeah, I do. I think that
00:25:39
Speaker
people drew in caves. You want to be able to write things down and show people things visually.
Collaboration and Teamwork in DataViz
00:25:50
Speaker
And where I think no matter what your toolset is, like if you're holding a pen in your hand or you are neck deep in JavaScript, the skill of being a partner with the person with information is kind of the
00:26:09
Speaker
The big skill, you know, like my first job out of college was a business analyst and I was helping gather requirements for software development.
00:26:18
Speaker
And at first I was like, I cannot believe this is a job. I didn't know this was a job, but you know, there has to be someone who's talking to the client, figuring out what they want to do, writing, writing down the requirements and then talking to someone who knows the tool and translating that into a solution. So, um, there's the tool part, which was, we were talking about, but I think as the tools change, you know, the person who is coding things up, they lose a little bit of value. If somebody.
00:26:48
Speaker
uh, changes the tool randomly. Like they have no control. They have no control. No control of that. Right. But the skill of knowing how to draw that information out of a client and translate it for a technical person. I feel like that's the skill. Yeah.
00:27:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. So I've said for a while, and I think we agree on this, that there's not like a person that can do all of this, right? That can do the data work and the design and the, I guess, computer science or building the visualization. There's all these different pieces of it. And I've sort of said for a while, there's like, the goal for us as individuals is not to be able to do all of that, like the unicorn, right? That we need these teams. And my instinct is that that will become even
00:27:35
Speaker
more the case as the technology and the tools become more complicated, become more intricate. When we think about different platforms, right? Like we went from a world where it was like printed on the newspaper
00:27:50
Speaker
to printed newspaper and on a computer, to printed on a newspaper, desktop computer, phone, tablet. Now we're going to start adding virtual reality, augmented reality, whatever the other communication devices are. So the platforms change and are going to evolve. And my instinct is that teams are going to be just so much more important.
00:28:14
Speaker
in the future, which we could discuss, I think, for a long time about like, how is that going to work in a post pandemic world of like a mixed hybrid, in person virtual world, that's like a different discussion. But to your point about like, the key is how to draw those insights and then how to communicate them. I still think teams are going to be so crucial to that.
00:28:38
Speaker
What about, I think, I guess we're just talking about being generally a good consultant, right? Knowing which questions to ask, which you do need to have expertise to, which maybe you got by having a tool, by knowing a tool and having experience with it. So you have expertise, which means that you know which questions to ask when you're talking to somebody. So that means if you,
00:29:06
Speaker
hone your skill on translating your expertise into questions, then it doesn't matter what tool you use. Well, again, it sort of depends, but I would say the tool itself matters less than the crucial thing that you just mentioned, which is this translation, right? And how do you know what the right questions to ask and how do you find that insight? Because at the end of the day,
00:29:31
Speaker
For example, if I had a client that said, we want you to critique this and I give them all this feedback and they say, okay, you've convinced us that we should go to a Tableau solution or we should go to a comic book solution. Can you do that for us? And I would say, well, no, but I can call my friend Allie and she and I can work together and we can work amongst the two of us and Allie can draw the comics for you and then we can deliver that back to you.
00:29:59
Speaker
And so again, I don't think it's the tool specific. I always try to be tool agnostic. And hopefully people have seen that in the Better Data Vis book that my goal in all those images, I used so many different tools in that book.
00:30:18
Speaker
I did my like real first like stuff in JavaScript. I did a lot of R. I did a lot of Tableau. I did a bunch of illustrator. I did raw graphs. I did data wrapper. I did a lot in Excel. Like I use all those tools and hopefully when you read the book, you can't really tell which tool was used to make those things except for, except I will admit that the matrix does look very Tableau. Like that's, that's the one it's hard not to, but I ran out of, I ran out of energy by the time I got to like, you know, it's like a 10 might, you know,
00:30:48
Speaker
15 by 15 grid and I didn't feel like just doing all the hard work like it was so easy in Tableau. So like pipe it to Illustrator and just kind of be done. Because it doesn't really, and I know lots of people disagree with us on this, right? Because there is like the Tableau camp and the R camp and the Python camp. But I just think a tool is a tool. And if you're a shop that uses Microsoft,
00:31:13
Speaker
and you have Excel is already in your budget because you're spending, you need Word and PowerPoint. There's nothing wrong with Excel. Are you going to use Excel to build interactive dashboards online? No, but that's not what it's built for. And are you going to use, I don't know, I'll take another example.
00:31:31
Speaker
Power BI to build some sort of beautiful looking custom thing that would show up on the New York Times website?
Tool Expertise and Flexibility
00:31:37
Speaker
No, probably not. That's not what it's built for. And to your point about the evolution of new tools, we're going to have to be flexible with that. We're going to have to be able to say, this tool is great for this, but not for this other thing. I think the new tool that I've seen a lot more of is the observable notebooks that Mike Bostock has started and popularized.
00:32:01
Speaker
where I see that is it's taking JavaScript and also these other other programming languages, but primarily I think, not my area, but primarily JavaScript and making it more collaborative, right? And that's where the teamwork comes in, right? Where you are creating these observable notebooks where people can go in and they can see your code and they can add onto the code and they can, they can
00:32:22
Speaker
edit the code. And I think that embodies this whole idea of teams and organizations working together. Back to your point, Ali, I think the key questions and finding insight, like that's not going to change. How the tools change and how we interact with people, that is going to continue to evolve.
00:32:40
Speaker
Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. That's a, that's a great point because I, I think that if specializing in a tool and being really good at a tool is really important in there, it can be very lucrative and very helpful. And if you are part of the team, you know, you, you do need to have a specialization if you're part of a team. So you're, you will need probably to be using, um, a tool, but I personally, and I hope other people kind of also keep in the back of their mind that.
00:33:09
Speaker
they need to be honing a skill beyond the tool and be thinking about putting their expertise into questions and also honing their ability to communicate with another team, which I guess is a skill across any field. But I think you make a great point because you could be a JavaScript programmer, like a D3 programmer, and you could love to code, and you could love to be neck deep in code all day.
00:33:36
Speaker
But you need to be able to say to the the rest of your team, you know, the way we've thought about this as I work with the code and as I build the visualization, we're not quite telling the story that I think we want to tell. So I agree that there's a specialization that's needed. I think that's I mean, that's how you build the unicorn. Right. You have different people specialize. But
00:33:57
Speaker
you have to be able to respect and understand all these different skill sets. In my experience, a lot of researchers that I've worked with, particularly economists, because we economists tend to look down on everybody, so that's just a whole other problem. But it was especially early on in my experience, particularly at Urban, where people would say, oh, we wrote this 200-page report. Can you help put this onto a web page by the end of the week? It's like, no.
00:34:26
Speaker
building those web pages and building data visualizations and doing the design. These are all skills and they take time and they take expertise and it's not just like pressing a button to get this stuff done. And I think if whatever of these different areas that you're doing, whether it's the coding or the statistics or illustration or the writing, to be able to understand and respect that all these skills are skills and they take time and expertise to build together, I think that's where we end up with really successful projects.
00:34:56
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great point. You have a lot of these questions, this expertise built up. When you're doing these consulting projects, do you have a, maybe a list of questions or a template that you work off of as you're consulting with people?
00:35:12
Speaker
That's a great question. I do and I don't. So I have a couple of like templates that I use for things. I will say I'm more formal about presentations than I am really about database. I have sort of like four or five questions about database that I tend to ask, but it's not like I haven't written down. It's sort of like always in the back of my mind. It's like.
00:35:32
Speaker
Who is your audience? Like especially if like actually yesterday a colleague sent me like a few briefs to look through and they were like it was a series of stacked bar charts. It was like we'd really like to like change things up maybe show some different things. So like first question is always like who is the audience? What do you want them to know? Who you know are they policymakers? Are they researchers? Like who is it?
00:35:54
Speaker
And then to me, it's always like, is it important for the reader to see the exact values? Is it like 2% and 1.9% or is it like this thing's bigger than this other thing? And then it's helpful when it's specific because I can say, is it important to see this part to whole relationship or is it a level question? So a little more into the weeds.
00:36:13
Speaker
With presentations, I have a worksheet that I send. It's a two-page worksheet that I send people. I'm like, here are the 10 questions you need to answer. And fill this out, and then we'll have a call about it. But I need to know these answers. And it comes right out of my first book. I mean, I'm sure you've had this experience. But they're not groundbreaking questions. They're just prompting people to think hard about these things, where they're just taking it for granted. So do you have a specific?
00:36:42
Speaker
Like script? I wouldn't call it a script, but since I can't lean on as many years as you have of expertise, I realized that I can't remember everything. It'll become second nature at some point, but I can't remember everything. So I did every time I'm in a meeting.
00:37:00
Speaker
And I somehow ask a question that made a really good answer come back. I write it down. For example, I was working with a client. We were trying to figure out which metrics to show on this dashboard. And I was like, what would you see on a dashboard that would make you pick up the phone and call your boss?
00:37:20
Speaker
Because that's what we need to be showing on this dashboard. And so I wrote that question down. So I think that's a great skill for anybody that's listening is to notice when you're asking good questions and then write them down. And then over time, you're going to have this amazing questionnaire that you can pull from and be that person who can be a great date of his designer without a specific tool.
00:37:46
Speaker
So have you gotten to the point where you'll send them like that questionnaire as you get started, or is it more an informal, you have your list next to you as you're on the phone, or do you send them like, here's a Word document, fill these out, and then we can have a call to talk more about them.
00:38:01
Speaker
So far it's been better for me to be on a call and then I walk through it because then there's just too many questions that don't apply and I don't want them to be confused by it and so then I get to pick and then also some just some need a little bit more pulling so I like a whole section on art direction because I feel like that's very important depending on what you're doing of course but right if it's if it's applicable it's very important but a lot of people don't really understand what I'm asking like
00:38:30
Speaker
How do you want people to feel when they see this graphic? And a lot of people are just like, I don't know. Choose the happy face or the sad face. Like, where do you want it to be? Right. So I have to feed some words and some adjectives so we can talk about it. So I have found that it works better for me so far to have a call about it, rather than sending it to them and answering it. But like you said, if you do have like the three basic questions that you always ask,
00:38:53
Speaker
I can definitely see how that would work where you send that to them ahead of time. Right. So to the tools part of our discussion. So when you're having this more or less towards the beginning of the engagement, do you talk about tools? I guess there's kind of two questions here. So do you talk about tools and like what their toolkit solution is and maybe what they would want to evolve to? And do you also like bringing, I mean, presumably a lot of people are finding it because a lot of your illustration work. And I just wonder like, you know, it's so.
00:39:23
Speaker
pervasive now to be like, let's make a dashboard and let's make a JavaScript thing. But like, do you talk to people like, yeah, maybe a comic or an illustration would actually be a solution to this particular project. Yeah, I'm definitely asking about tools because first of all, I have to know if.
00:39:40
Speaker
I can help them with what they need. You know sometimes people, oh, we only use Power BI. I'm like, well, I don't know Power BI, so there's really only so much. I'm not the right person for you. Maybe I can do a strategy piece at the beginning or a discovery piece, but I can't actually follow through for you. I'm definitely talking about tools.
00:39:59
Speaker
beforehand and suggesting things that I know because I am talking to a lot of data as people. So I do know that there's a lot of options out there and I know a lot of options that other people don't know. So I am definitely talking about tools and helping people figure out what they need from a selfish perspective to see if I can help them, but also so they can benefit from my expertise as well because a tool expertise is actually a subset
00:40:26
Speaker
Maybe that's the thing that we're talking about, just making sure that you know that the tool expertise is a subset of your, your database expertise. Yeah. I mean, I think to your point, like it is knowing being an expert for being really good. I'm not being an expert, whatever that means, but being really good at a tool is certainly helpful because like you said, if someone wants a power BI solution and you know how to do power BI, then you're the person.
00:40:49
Speaker
But I also think, again, to your point, if someone wants a Power BI solution, you don't do Power BI, but you could set them up to be successful. And then to say, hey, I can link you. I have a list of people that do Power BI that I know that I put you in touch with. I think as freelancers and just as people, that's just a good strategy to just help them find that solution.
00:41:12
Speaker
We got a little bit away from our core question of like, what's the future? But like, I think these are all really interesting strategies and techniques. I wanted to ask you one last question, like, coming out of the pandemic, as we sort of move towards whatever world we're going to be in, which I think
00:41:31
Speaker
my instinct is it'll be sort of hybrid world where there's gonna be more Zoom meetings and in-person and this and that. Do you think that's gonna change how we, I'll say is we as consultants or database creators, do you think that's gonna change how we do our work?
00:41:51
Speaker
I'm hoping that Dataviz designers see more of a future for themselves outside of a
00:42:05
Speaker
They're the one job that they have or the one tool set that they use. I guess that's why I, I'm very interested in talking about this topic right now. Cause the pandemic, it just made me feel, want to think a little bit more holistically about, um, cause you can see how quickly things can change. So it's just like how maybe that's where this discussion came from is just how am I going to make sure that I can continue to be a database designer?
00:42:31
Speaker
no matter what happens because so many different things can happen and companies can go under and tools can crop up out of nowhere. So I just want to make sure that I'm staying ahead of it. So I do feel like I'm hoping that after the pandemic people will think outside of their tool expertise and think more holistically about their careers.
Pandemic Impact and Value of DataViz
00:42:56
Speaker
I know, I think that's a great point. I'll also say that I, and I wrote about this a while ago, I was really worried about the economy sort of turning and moving into recession because the sort of, I would say the peak of like professional data, this development.
00:43:12
Speaker
hadn't really experienced a recession. So coming out of the Great Recession in 2007, 2008, we had had this prolonged period of economic growth. And I was really worried that the first thing companies and organizations would cut would be their creative departments or the data visit departments, because maybe that's not central to their mission of selling widgets or services, whatever.
00:43:39
Speaker
But I don't think that happened. Right? I mean, I think because of the popularity of these COVID charts. Right. Yeah, that's right. It's gotten bigger the day. Yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, I think there's there's more I think there's more appreciation. There's more value there. And so, yeah, I think I think broadening and just.
00:43:59
Speaker
I think for all of us, recognizing that data vis is not a single thing, right? I think you and I have had the same experience with doing our podcasts, right? That every guest comes to this field from like a totally different place.
00:44:14
Speaker
So because people are coming from a different place and because there's so many skills sort of intertwined in there, that it's not to be successful, I think it's not just about doing one thing, it's about, and it can be that one tool, be the expert in whatever that one tool is, but also these other pieces that are around it and being able to ask these questions, being able to look at the data and being able to tell stories. I think all of these are part of this rather complex field and it's not just like, you know,
00:44:42
Speaker
painting pretty pictures, right? There's more to it
Conclusion and Wrap-up
00:44:45
Speaker
than that. Yep. It's all about communication. All about communication. This has been so much fun. This date of his today policy of his joint podcasts. So thanks so much. No, thank you for being on my show. Thank you for being on my show. This is great. All right. I will talk to you soon. Thanks so much, Ellen. Bye. Bye.
00:45:08
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of the podcast. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Allie. Really recommend you check out her webpage, AllieTortman.com. Also check out her podcast, DataViz, today. You can download it from all the major podcast providers, just like you can with this show, and check out her episodes when they come out. So, until next time, this has been the PolicyViz podcast. Thanks so much for listening.
00:45:35
Speaker
A number of people help bring you the policy of this podcast. Music is provided by the NRIs. Audio editing is provided by Ken Skaggs. Design and promotion is created with assistance from Sharon Satsuki-Ramirez. And each episode is transcribed by Jenny Transcription Services. If you'd like to help support the podcast, please share it and review it on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:56
Speaker
The policy of his podcast is ad free and supported by listeners. If you'd like to help support the show financially, please visit our PayPal page or our Patreon page at patreon.com slash policy.