Good Charts for Persuasive Presentations

How to Use the Best Data Visualizations for Great Presentations (2 Books)

Scott Berinato, Nancy Duarte

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781633694064
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

The right visual revealed at the right time can turn an unremarkable presentation into a resonant, emotional experience. This two-book collection provides you with the tools you need to craft and deliver presentations that will impress your audience, increase your influence in your organization, and advance your career.

Good Charts: The HBR Guide to Making Smarter, More Persuasive Data Visualizations shows how a good visualization can communicate the nature and potential impact of information and ideas more powerfully than any other form of communication. For a long time "dataviz" was left to specialists--data scientists and professional designers. No longer. A new generation of tools and massive amounts of available data make it easy for anyone to create visualizations that communicate ideas far more effectively than generic spreadsheet charts ever could. What's more, building good charts is quickly becoming a need-to-have skill for managers. If you're not doing it, other managers are, and they're getting noticed for it and getting credit for contributing to your company's success. In Good Charts, dataviz maven Scott Berinato provides an essential guide to how visualization works and how to use this new language to impress and persuade. Dataviz today is where spreadsheets and word processors were in the early 1980s—on the cusp of changing how we work. Berinato lays out a system for thinking visually and building better charts through a process of talking, sketching, and prototyping. This book is much more than a set of static rules for making visualizations. It taps into both well-established and cutting-edge research in visual perception and neuroscience, as well as the emerging field of visualization science, to explore why good charts (and bad ones) create "feelings behind our eyes." Along the way, Berinato also includes many engaging vignettes of dataviz pros, illustrating the ideas in practice. Good Charts will help you turn plain, uninspiring charts that merely present information into smart, effective visualizations that powerfully convey ideas.

HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations will teach you to how to take the pain out of presentations. Terrified of speaking in front of a group? Or simply looking to polish your skills? No matter where you are on the spectrum, this guide will give you the confidence and the tools you need to get results. Written by presentation expert Nancy Duarte, the HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations will help you: (1) Win over tough crowds, (2) Organize a coherent narrative, (3) Create powerful messages and visuals, (4) Connect with and engage your audience, (5) Show people why your ideas matter to them, and (6) Strike the right tone, in any situation.

A NOTE ON THE EBOOK EDITION

This ebook edition of GOOD CHARTS: THE HBR GUIDE TO MAKING SMARTER, MORE PERSUASIVE DATA VISUALIZTIONS displays best on a color e-reader with “Original” or “Publisher Font” selected, using the “Scrolling View” option if it is available on your device.

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Copyright 2016 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation
All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to [email protected], or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the book’s publication but may be subject to change.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Berinato, Scott, author.

Title: Good charts : the HBR guide to making smarter, more persuasive data visualizations / by Scott Berinato.

Description: Boston, Massachusetts : Harvard Business Review Press, [2016]

Identifiers: LCCN 2015046676 (print) | LCCN 2016002607 (ebook) | ISBN 9781633690707 (paperback) | ISBN 9781633690714 ( )

Subjects: LCSH: Business presentations—Charts, diagrams, etc. | Visual communication. | Communication in management. | BISAC: BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Business Communication / Meetings & Presentations. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Business Communication / General. | BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Strategic Planning.

Classification: LCC HF5718.22 .B475 2016 (print) | LCC HF5718.22 (ebook) | DDC 658.4/52—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015046676

ISBN: 978-1-63369-070-7
eISBN: 978-1-63369-071-4

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

A NEW LANGUAGE AND A NECESSARY CRAFT

Part One

UNDERSTAND

Chapter 1

A BRIEF HISTORY OF DATAVIZ

THE ART AND SCIENCE THAT BUILT A NEW LANGUAGE

Chapter 2

WHEN A CHART HITS OUR EYES

SOME SCIENCE OF HOW WE SEE

Part Two

CREATE

Chapter 3

TWO QUESTIONS ➔ FOUR TYPES

A SIMPLE TYPOLOGY FOR CHART MAKING

Idea Illustration

Idea Generation

Visual Discovery

Everyday Dataviz

Chapter 4

BETTER CHARTS IN A COUPLE OF HOURS

A SIMPLE FRAMEWORK

Prep

Talk and Listen

Sketch

Prototype

Part Three

REFINE

Chapter 5

REFINE TO IMPRESS

GETTING TO THE “FEELING BEHIND OUR EYES”

Chapter 6

REFINE TO PERSUADE

THREE STEPS TO MORE-PERSUASIVE CHARTS

Chapter 7

PERSUASION OR MANIPULATION?

THE BLURRED EDGE OF TRUTH

Part Four

PRESENT AND PRACTICE

Chapter 8

PRESENT TO PERSUADE

GETTING A GOOD CHART TO THEIR EYES AND INTO THEIR MINDS

Chapter 9

VISUAL CRIT

HOW TO PRACTICE LOOKING AT (AND MAKING) GOOD CHARTS

CONCLUSION

KEEP GOING

Glossary

Notes

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

A NEW LANGUAGE AND A NECESSARY CRAFT

“. . . for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

—Shakespeare

IN A WORLD governed by data, in knowledge economies where ideas are currency, visualization has emerged as our shared language. Charts, graphs, maps, diagrams—even animated GIFs and emojis—all transcend text, spoken languages, and cultures to help people understand one another and connect. This visual language is used everywhere in the world, every day.

Dashboard maps in cars help commuters avoid the thick red lines of heavy traffic and find the kelly green routes where traffic is light. Weather apps use iconography and rolling trend lines to make forecasts accessible at a glance. Fitness-tracking apps default to simple charts that show steps taken, sleep patterns, eating habits, and more. Utility company bills include charts so consumers can see how their energy use compares with their neighbors’. Newspapers, magazines, and websites all use visualization to attract audiences and tell complex stories. The social web teems with data visualizations—some practical, some terrible, some rich with insight, some simply fun to look at—all vying to go viral. Sports broadcasts superimpose visual data on live action, from first-down lines on a football field to more sophisticated pitch-sequence diagrams and spray charts that show a baseball’s trajectory and expose pitching and hitting trends.

Data visualization is everywhere, from live sports to the news to fitness apps.

You may not notice all the ways in which dataviz has seeped into your daily life, but you have come to expect it. Even if you think you can’t speak this language, you hear it and understand it every day.

It’s time to learn to speak it, too. Just as the consumerization of technology adoption and the widespread use of social media changed business, the ubiquity of dataviz in our lives is driving demand for good charts in unit meetings, sales presentations, customer research reports, performance reviews, entrepreneurs’ pitches, and all the way up to the boardroom.1 Increasingly, when an executive sees a line chart that’s been spit out of Excel and pasted into a presentation, she wonders why it doesn’t look more like the simple, beautiful charts on her fitness-tracker app. When a manager spends time trying to parse pie charts and donut charts and multiple trend lines on a company dashboard, he wonders why they don’t look as nice or feel as easily understood as his weather app.

BUSINESS’S NEW LINGUA FRANCA

Speaking this new language requires us to adopt a new way of thinking—visual thinking—that is evolving quickly in business. Making good charts isn’t a special or a nice-to-have skill anymore; it’s a must-have skill. If all you ever do is click a button in Excel or Google Charts to generate a basic chart from some data set, you can be sure that some of your colleagues are doing more and getting noticed for it. No company today would hire a manager who can’t negotiate the basics of a spreadsheet; no company tomorrow will hire one who can’t think visually and produce good charts.

Dataviz has become an imperative for competitive co...

Table of contents

• Good Charts for Persuasive Presentations
• Good Charts by Scott Berinato
• HBR Guide to Persuasive Presentations by Nancy Duarte