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Data Visualisation & Dashboards

How to turn data into charts and dashboards that answer a real question honestly: matching chart form to message, keeping axes and labels truthful, using colour for meaning, and designing dashboards people actually act on.

55m
Total time
4
Competency levels
12
Lessons

What you'll learn

  • Start every visualisation from the question, the audience and the decision it supports
  • Match chart form to the message — comparison, trend, part-to-whole, distribution or relationship
  • Recognise and avoid dishonest presentation such as truncated axes, dual axes and inconsistent intervals
  • Use colour for meaning, with colour-blind-safe choices and the reserved red/amber/green semantics of HSE and operations reporting
  • Declutter a chart by removing chart junk, 3-D effects and anything that carries no information
  • Design a dashboard with a clear top-left question, drill-down layering and a refresh cadence matched to the decision

Curriculum

Progress through each competency level in order.

1

Awareness

  • Start With the Question, Not the Chart
    Knowledge
    3m
  • Honest Charts: Axes, Labels and Sources
    Knowledge
    3m
  • Awareness Check: Purpose and Honesty
    Assessment
    7m
2

Knowledge

  • Matching Chart Form to the Message
    Knowledge
    3m
  • Colour With Meaning, and Decluttering
    Knowledge
    3m
  • Knowledge Check: Form, Colour and Clutter
    Assessment
    8m
3

Skill

  • Designing a Dashboard People Act On
    Knowledge
    3m
  • Redesign a Chart and Build a One-Screen Dashboard
    Assignment
    3m
  • Skill Check: Applying Visualisation Judgement
    Assessment
    8m
4

Mastery

  • Leading a Reporting System: Watermelons and Trust
    Knowledge
    3m
  • Audit and Rebuild a Reporting Pack
    Assignment
    3m
  • Mastery Check: Reporting Leadership Judgement
    Assessment
    8m

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