But that’s not really practical in this line of work. So next week we’re moving our group chat debates about AI and charts out of Slack and into our next episode of Chart Chat.

Are we in for a wave of AI chart slop?

This month, we’re going to dig into three sound bites from a recent episode of The AI Analyst? that sparked conversations about our changing field.

Andy interviewed (IBM currently, with credentials as a tech founder, community leader, and data visualization expert to name a few) about the importance of experimenting and making mistakes with AI tools.

On Chart Chat, we’ll dive into three notable quotes from the conversation:

"The toughest thing about being able to make anything you want now is that nobody wants to hear about it."

We used to make something, share it on social media, and celebrate, critique and grow as a community. Now, he says, “AI projects are like dreams.” Since anyone can make anything we’re more interested in building in our own silos. But is that a good thing?

"By the time you've finished writing your critique of it, 10 million more diagrams have been made."

AI tools are changing the pace of work, including how we spin up charts, dashboards, and websites. I think critique and human-to-human conversations about how people engage with charts is more important than ever as barriers to building new data apps disappear, but how do we navigate the volume?

"Most charts are going to be made by AI and most charts are going to follow good rules… one of the concerns I would have is that they don't try to break those rules."

Rules can be good. They’re the starting point for most of us who teach data viz (learn the rules before you break them!).

But if every chart in the world followed the rules, the world of data visualization would be a sea of cookie cutter bar and line charts. Useful in many contexts, but making data meaningful often requires some out of the box thinking.

If AI tools do start ‘breaking the rules’ a bit more though, are we in for a world of AI chart slop similar to the wave of AI generating marketing flyers that most of us can spot from a mile away?

I don’t think ‘AI getting creative with data’ is going to produce the creative brilliance of designers like Giorgia Luipi or create chart models like the climate stripes. I worry that we’re in for a lot of the chart-equivalent of brushstroke fonts and absolute failures of visual hierarchy.

A suggested ‘watch before the episode’

As we’ll be digging into some quotes and themes from Andy’s recent episode of The AI Analyst? with Elijah, we’d recommend giving the conversation a watch before Chart Chat. Not required, but a great watch or listen worth 45 minutes of your time.

One ask: subscribe!

Next week marks 75 episodes of Chart Chat, ranging from interviews with data viz experts and researchers to “one chart, four ways” makeovers to more meta discussions around disruptions in our field.

Last month on Chart Chat, we looked back at publications we’ve read that have shaped how we think about data viz. If you missed it, catch up on YouTube, where you can find all of our past episodes.

If you love Chart Chat, one of the best ways to support the podcast is to subscribe on YouTube, which can help us reach more data enthusiasts.

Thanks for watching, and see you next Thursday for Chart Chat!

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We’re sharing the links in advance in case you want to give them a read before Chart Chat and add your voice to the discussion (which is one of our favorite parts of having a live event).

Two papers for our Chart Chat

For those curious about how AI tools are reshaping data analysis and visualization, we’ll start with about “Data has entered the chat: How data workers conduct exploratory visual analytic conversations with GenAI agents” (Matt-Heun Hong and Anamaria Crisan).

Rather than focusing on how AI tools can be used specifically to build charts to communicate findings (which we’ve seen have mixed results), the research team investigated what patterns and sentiments emerged when data workers used conversational interfaces to analyze a dataset.

Then, we’ll dig into “Polarizing Political Polls: How Visualization Design Choices Can Shape Public Opinion and Increase Political Polarization” (Eli Holder and Cindy Xiong Bearfield), which feels timely as we approach the midterm elections here in the US.

Eli is a researcher who does an exceptional job sharing out his findings in ways that practitioners can use. He was our guest for Chart Chat #53 and gave an excellent keynote on Visual Villiany at Outlier 2024.

Where to find more papers

If you’re a data viz nerd and appreciate the why behind effective visualizations, there is a wealth of research to explore! VisPubs gives you an interface to search and explore papers across visualization topics, including some neat embedded visualizations of the library.

If you join us live on Thursday, we’d love to have you share a paper that influenced your work using the chat or on our Zoom after party!

There are still plenty of barriers to building a new data app. I certainly couldn’t ask my grandmother to vibe code a dashboard. She doesn’t even have a computer. But for people with the basic access to technology and a Claude subscription, building something is far faster than ever before.

But does that mean what we’re building is useful?

The coming month also marks one year since we published Dashboards That Deliver. If you still haven’t bought a copy, there’s no time like the present to place an order. Or watch for a special giveaway later this month…

— Amanda

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The skills that differentiate your charts in a world of vibe-coded work

The time it takes to get from an idea (a spark!) for a new data app to something published can be faster today than a year ago, particularly for personal data projects or quick ad hoc designs. Enterprise apps with more complexity, contributors, and data governance take more time to get right, even with more AI applications helping development along.

But it’s not just the amount of time we’re spending that’s changing: it’s where we, as human designers, spend our time that matters.

Consider a typical Tableau build. To create something meaningful you needed to define requirements up front and (ideally) would prototype some examples for early feedback. But most of the time was spend actually developing the dashboard. That included both the backend data work and the front end design.

When timelines are constrained, what got skipped? It wasn’t the development work necessary to deliver for your client or team. Instead, teams often compromised on the time spent on discovery and user testing, with most of our time dedicated to building the thing.

Now, there are tools that can help build things faster to show to users:

• For prototyping, we can create mockups with a prompt instead of dragging and rearranging components repeatedly in Figma or on sketch boards.

• For the backend parts of development, we can leverage more tools to semi-automate data cleaning and organization

• In development, we can use AI tools within various SaaS stacks or in vibe-coding to go from data to visualization very quickly

There are plenty of enterprise use cases where the change is less pronounced. But it’s likely that we’ll continue to see a shift away from spending the majority of our time in development to having more time to dedicate to discovery, prototyping, and user testing.

This can be good, if we use that time to build better things.

In Dashboards That Deliver, the first 130 pages are dedicated to our user-centered framework for dashboard design, which emphasizes the importance of engaging with the people who are going to user your tools.

Early on, that’s through discovery, where you’re interviewing and learning from users to solve the right problem (when do they really need data and to do what), and prototyping (what would the charts look like that address those needs).

The point of a more detailed process isn’t to create a bunch of design assets that sit in a shared folder, though documentation and writing things down can be very helpful as inputs into models when you’re using AI tools. The goal is to engage with and understand the people using your dashboard so you build something useful.

As tools allow us to build things faster and generally build more things with the same time, consider this your nudge to step away from Claude deliberately during your design process. Talk to people, get real feedback, even make messier, sketched prototypes that don’t look as final — you’re often more likely to get feedback and disagreement on something that looks messier and early stage.

When the barriers to building things are disappearing, your expertise, judgement, and prioritization of what’s most important to include in an interface is the differentiator between a mediocre dashboard and one that reshapes how people use data.

Chart Chat 74: From Research to Practice

Part of that design expertise can be informed by research, which inspired this month’s Chart Chat episode.

Join Andy, Jeff, and me for Chart Chat 74 where we share favorite papers from the world of academia that influenced our design and teaching of data visualization. As always, there will be a quick ‘after party’ on zoom following the episode, and we’d love to see you there to share impactful studies you refer to in your work.

Where to connect in September

Beyond Chart Chat, don’t miss other opportunities to level up your data design knowledge:

• “Make with AI. Make mistakes with AI” on The AI Analyst hosted by Andy and featuring Elijah Meeks (September 3) — You don’t want to miss what’s sure to be a lively discussion about the role of AI in reshaping the world of data design. Elijah has made the case that AI tools democratizing data visualization is a good thing and redesigned his Semiotic library to be AI aligned. Agree? Disagree? Join the live stream to share your thoughts.,

• Data Visualization for Public Health (September 17) — A sprint workshop featuring key skills for building better charts for data communication. Examples are all from real data in the world of public health, though colleagues in education, nonprofits, and other social sciences will find the session useful too! Use code ‘vizresponsibly’ for a discount!

We’ll see you at Chart Chat 74!

Andy here with the latest Chart Chat newsletter. I had planned to write a recap of episode #72 where we showed some recent projects (go watch it here), but I got distracted today by a certain anniversary.

What’s the longest living dashboard you’ve built?

Before we get to that: with wildfires raging across the northern hemisphere, there has been a vast amount of maps and visuals around fire spread, air quality, and climate change.

Our next Chart Chat, on Monday 3 August, we’ll look at all the ways the data is being communicated. Sign up here.

We’re lovin’ it.

The longest I know of is The Economist’s Big Mac Index. Forty years ago, Pam Woodall, economics editor at The Economist had a “bathtub moment” and realised comparing Big Mac prices across the world would be a great way to describe purchasing power parity.

The interactive version became one of the most visited pages of The Economist and is a textbook example of dashboard design and evolution. It’s literally a textbook example: it’s in both our books!

From a dashboarding perspective, why has it persevered?

Hold the pickle, pass the PPP.

First, it answers a question people want answered. Economists worldwide want to compare the performance of currencies; it is an evergreen question. People could consult the World Bank’s figures, but they’re far more complex, and lag three years behind today; the latest I could find was data for 2021, published in 2024.

Or they could go for the simpler version. Some claim the Big Mac Index isn’t accurate. However, it’s accurate enough for the people using it.

Do you want stats with that?

Second, it’s evolved with the times.

Our Dashboards That Deliver framework describes the steps to take after a dashboard is released.

In the Dashboards That Deliver chapter, Matt McLean from The Economist, told us how the team considers each update. This includes:

• Tracking, and analysing, clicks and interactions with browser technology such as Hotjar.

• Ask users what they want to see in the next iteration (and then make difficult decisions because it’s not possible to please everyone all the time).

• Sketch out new ideas and adapt to new browser technology.

The price is right

This dashboard is a favourite of mine because the team spends so much time considering each evolution.

Dashboards are rarely one-shot projects. A key part of our book's framework is to focus on evolving as users’ needs and questions change. Sometimes you might even need to delete a dashboard. We found in our research that these steps are often missed.

I suspect the Big Mac Index has another 40 years of life in it. Congratulations to The Economist’s data team and thank you for working with us to include it in our books.

That’s all for now. In the meantime, don’t forget you can get Dashboards That Deliver from your favourite book store (and Amazon, if you have to).

And finally, do join us on Chart Chat, Monday 3 August, we’ll look at how wildfire data is being communicated. Sign up here.

Do let us know what your longest living dashboards are.

Best wishes

Andy

If you missed the episode, you can catch the replay over on YouTube. You’ll get our musings and practical tips to help you do more supercharging than sabotaging if you’re bringing AI tools into your workflow.

In this newsletter are:

• Register for Chart Chat 72: Show and Tell

• Reflections on the discussion around AI tools in data analysis

• How might we consider the potential risk of harm in our work (particularly when using AI tools.

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Chart Chat 72: Show and Tell

Join us on Thursday, July 23 at 11AM EDT for Chart Chat 72. We’re holding a summertime show and tell, where we each bring an example of a project and share some of the learning from along the design journey.

Register so you get the calendar invite and reminders about where to hop on for the live stream over on YouTube or LinkedIn live.

After our July episode, we’ll be on summer holiday for August and plan to return with a new episode in September. In the meantime, you can always get your Chart Chat fix watching previous episodes over on YouTube.

Supercharge v. Sabotage

Looking back to last month’s episode, one central theme cut across the examples from all four of our segments, captured in a quote Andy shared:

“To be a great AI data analyst, you need to be…a great data analyst.”

Mark Bradbourne

AI tools are powerful new tools. If you use them to extend how you apply your knowledge, that can supercharge your capabilities. In data visualization, that could look like rapid prototyping dashboard concepts, data scraping, or even vibe coding whole applications (as a start).

But no matter where we bring these new tools into our work, it’s our responsibility to do data quality checks, bring the added context a model won’t have, and sign off on the final product when we publish.

How might we think more deeply about the risk of doing harm?

Beyond the usual checks for accuracy in the data representations, I’d suggest analysts take more time to consider the risk of doing harm with our work including:

• Who is our audience —> to think more deeply about who you’re reaching and their relationship with the data you’re sharing

• At what scale will our work have an impact —> to think about how widespread the damage could be if we shared inaccurate or misleading information

• And where the source data is coming from —> to think about your relationship with the data, how much you trust it, and your ability to spot errors.

I dug into these themes in our discussion and in this recent post:

Viz Responsibly

What's the risk in using AI tools for analytics?

There’s a lot of “use AI or get left behind” on my timeline these days, including among data and analytics folks…

Read more

4 months ago · 1 like · Amanda Makulec

Spoiler: they’re all worthwhile considerations for any data viz project, not just times that you’re using AI tools in your workflow.

In a real world application, Jeff shared a project his neighbor built to monitor the temperature of a lake in Wisconsin, with data feeding in from a sensor in the water.

Monitoring water temperatures is a low stakes use of AI tools to vibe code a simple app. Decisions being made may include whether or not to go swimming, but that’s a choice you could always change your mind on when you dip your toes in the water. You can verify the data accuracy if you’re someone living in the area.

The downsides of bad information could get worse if you’ve promised a three year old a swim based on warmer than usual water, resulting in a tantrum and a lot of wasted packing up of water toys. But you’d have historical trends on the app to give you clues if the temperature feels abnormally high and a potential data quality issue.

Thinking about the site along those three big buckets of potential harm:

• Audience: The primary audience is folks local to the lake. They aren’t usually making major decisions based on the water temperature and can verify the temperature themselves if needed.

• Scale: The reach of any ‘harm’ from inaccurate information is likely to be limited and won’t have long ranging effects.

• Source: The data is coming from a physical sense in the lake that could be verified with a secondary thermometer. The audience themselves can verify the data if needed by putting a foot in the lake (no analytics black box here).

Those patterns could look very different if a company is making a multimillion dollar acquisition deal or a hospital is using data in decision support systems though.

These considerations around the risk of harm are relevant for any data visualization project. But AI tools accelerate how quickly we can spin up visually engaging products and can create more distance between us as designers and the underlying data tables.

Even though we keep hearing in the news about the ways AI is reshaping work and making things more efficient, speed to deployment isn’t the only measure that matters. I hope that with some of the time savings in how we build things, we work with clients to spend more time building the right things.

Hi all,

Andy here. This time:

• Are they even called dashboards anymore?

• Details about Chart Chat 71 (“AI: Sabotage or Supercharge”) on June 18th. Register here.

  ---

Are they even called dashboards?

“Dashboards are dead,” rang through our heads as we wrote Dashboards That Deliver.

Thoughtspot had banged that drum for years; business users were fatigued by too many disappointing dashboard projects; and during our writing process, Generative AI swept in, promising to sweep away the traditional dashboard entirely.

So, did we write a book for a previous era?

No. But we might have given it the wrong title. Whatever its title, the principles in the book endure. I’d even like to make a case that the principles are more important than before.

Talkin’ bout the Generation

Tableau and Power BI are fading from their peak, and the industry is aggressively hyping the next big thing: “generative apps.” Have you seen what’s been announced and released recently?

• Microsoft just launched Fabric Apps for pixel-perfect data analytical displays.

• Hex has “generative data apps” (fancy a fairytale-style storybook data display? Here you go).

• Golden has launched with conversationally generated stories and dashboards.

• Veezoo has a new “canvas” feature.

• Lightdash is going all-in on “data apps”.

The narrative is clear, and it sounds fantastic: “The traditional dashboard is history. The AI-generated data app is here: if you can imagine it, you can build it.”

Alas, there are hard truths to consider.

Slop will tear us apart

If anyone can build anything with a single prompt, Excel and Dashboard hell are nothing compared to the AI Slop Mountain we are about to create.

When you lower the barrier to creation to zero, the requirement for discipline skyrockets.

AI agents are, at best, intern-level analysts. They’ll tirelessly answer all your questions with enthusiasm and misplaced confidence. But they don’t know your business context, they don’t understand human nuance, and certainly don’t have a critical eye for design.

This is exactly where the principles and frameworks we created in Dashboards That Deliver are needed.

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What’s skill go to do with it?

There is good news: you can build excellent generative data apps. To do so, users need a framework built on a strong foundation. A good dashboard isn’t built from a single sentence. A good generative app can’t be built from a single prompt.

• If you don’t work with users, you won’t build them an app that works for them. Discovery can be assisted very well by AI tools, but you can’t replace the hard work of working with them to understand their needs.

• A skilled “design eye” during Prototyping is vital for a successful user experience. LLMs have generic design knowledge but it’s not enough to fit your organisation’s context.

• Corporate style guides exist for a reason: if anyone can make anything, what kind of cognitive overwhelm will we end up with when every single app has its own unique (and probably very poor) interface and design style?

• Adoption. “Hey, you! I built this. Use it.” That approach didn’t work with dashboards. It won’t work with AI apps either. Adoption is a human process that requires time and planning. And speaking to humans a lot.

That’s why the framework in Dashboards That Deliver works for generative apps too.

I don’t give a monkey what you call the thing you’re building (heck, I wrote one of the chapters on that topic). What matters is that a successful data communication asset must be built on a successful foundation of analytical and design knowledge, aligned with the context of your own organisation's needs.

That foundation is not yet strong enough in any AI tools, despite what the marketing teams say. Only with a well-informed human at the helm can these tools deliver success beyond marketing. Do check out the book if you are interested.

My friend Mark Bradbourne said to me the other day, “If you want to be a great AI Data Analyst, be a great Data Analyst.” Amen!

Chart Chat and other goings on:

Chart Chat #71 is on June 18: we will be discussing our latest thoughts AI’s place in analytics. (You could also call this our mea culpa episode, following the AI-created issues in our last episode🙂). Click here to register.

Elsewhere, plenty is happening:

• I’ll be debating AI and Analytics with Francois Lopitaux, SVP of Product Management at Thoughtspot. Click here to register.

• Amanda and I will be hosting and speaking at the Outlier conference, June 24-26.

• Looking ahead to September: I’ll be doing a data storytelling workshop at Data Decoded in Manchester, and there is a special event cooking for Big Data London (I’m very excited about it!)

That’s all for now. Take care, and keep building amazing dashboards generative data apps.

Andy

Andy here with you this time. I hope you’re all well.

In this newsletter:

• How Chart Chat 70 contained a hidden AI pitfall.

• Details of Chart Chat 71 “Supercharge of Sabotage: The Two Faces of AI”. We’ll be discussing the issues raised in this newsletter and how we can tackle them: register here.

• What are the four of us up to?

  ---

Our chart makeover episodes are among our favourites; it’s a pleasure to see how each of us takes the same starting point (a chart and its data) and spins it in four completely different directions.

In this episode, we remade a chart by Visual Capitalist comparing the working and retired population numbers in the US.

The shaded line charts

Jeff, Amanda, and Steve all created variations of shaded-area line charts. Lisa Charlotte Muth had also done the same in a LinkedIn post ahead of the episode. Jeff pointed out that the shaded line chart can be traced back to William Playfair’s pioneering work in 1786. We all felt this approach was the best way to display this data.

Jeff also shared a Claude-created dashboard, whereas Amanda stayed human and did it all in Excel (possibly quicker than those of us who felt productive doing endless prompting to “get things right” 😜).

A slope chart exercise

I took a different approach: an animated slope chart. Each line represents a year; I wanted a chart that allowed viewers to see the stark change in the slope over time [caveat: if we assume the data is correct. We did discuss that in the episode, if you wish to go watch it.

I vibe-coded this with Claude (you can go play with the app here), and it rendered exactly what I’d envisioned. I was pleased. Until Chart Chat itself. My colleagues and commenters pointed out that they didn’t understand the chart: they weren’t used to seeing a slope chart where each line represents one year.

The lesson here is that I got carried away with my own assumptions of how people would interpret a chart. Just because I knew what the chart showed, it doesn’t mean others would. In our “After Party”, I created a few variations based on suggestions. This one seemed to be more intuitive:

Steve’s seductive dashboard

We need to talk about KevinSteve. We all enjoyed Steve’s story of vibe-coding with Claude to get this result:

It’s lovely. Except… the numbers are wrong. It had hard-coded incorrect values in the BANs, and none of us noticed. Were we seduced by the calming aesthetics, leading us to trust the numbers?

I wrote in detail about the error here:

Andy Cotgreave

Hallucinations in AI Analytics: still real and dangerous

It’s too easy to be wowed by AI Analytics and miss mistakes. Mistakes that then propagate through to incorrect decision-making…

Read more

6 months ago · 7 likes · 2 comments · Andy Cotgreave

Is this a bad advert for AI? Let’s say the feelings among the Chart Chat camp are divided. We’ll bring this to life in our next Chart Chat episode. As I speak to people across the data storytelling space, I continue to see divided opinions. Some people are bullish, others are terrified. As I wrote in my post above, this has hugely reduced my trust in genAI for analytics.

What do I recommend?

• If you’re using the genAI models to analyse your data, make sure your prompts are extremely detailed.

• Tell the AI to explain how it calculated all the numbers on display.

• Ask the AI if any numbers were hard-coded and if so, why.

• Create a risk matrix for yourself, or your team: what’s the impact of wrong numbers in any project you are doing?

I confess: I find all of those recommendations unsatisfying. The promise of genAI is that you don’t have to do any of these. The reality is that the UX of genAI requires you to be an excellent prompter and to treat these “super-tools” as nothing more than naive, enthusiastic interns. (Note to self: Jeff will have words to say about this perspective!).

What do you think? Are you pushing ahead with genAI for your data applications? How’s it going?

In our next Chart Chat, we’re going to be discussing this as our main theme, https://www.eventbrite.com/e/chart-chat-71-supercharge-v-sabotagethe-two-faces-of-ai-data-analysis-tickets-1989837704138?aff=dtdnews.

What’s happening elsewhere

• Chart Chat 71: Sabotage of Supercharge: The Two Faces of AI.

• I have some fun projects underway.

  • I’ve been exploring Tonic Fabricate, a great platform for making synthetic data. There is a demo video here, and next week, I’ll be joined by Mark Brocato (Tonic’s Head of Engineering) on The AI Analyst)

  • The Veezoo Analytics Cup is your chance to try out Veezoo with a World Cup dataset and have a chance to win a MacBook or iPad. Entries open until May 25th.

  • I did my “How to stay human in the age of AI” keynote at the Data Innovation Summit in Stockholm last week. My last newsletter was all about the topic, and you can watch the keynote here.

• Amanda is delivering her workshop “Data Visualisation for Public Health” online, beginning on June 12th. This is an excellent chance to learn from one of the best!

• Amazon are doing great deals on our books, right now. Steve's book, The Big Picture (winner of Data Literacy's best data viz book), is for sale on Amazon for just $19.85 (US Amazon link). That's the lowest price since the book first came out.

That’s all for now.

Don’t forget to join us for Chart Chat 71 on June 18.

Best wishes

Andy

Join us this week Thursday, April 30 at 11AM EDT to see how each of us redesigns a snazzy bar chart of public pension data. You can expect makeovers of the visualization and some pointed questions about the underlying data.

unDUBBED, TC, and other upcoming events

Andy and I hopped on the unDUBBED podcast this month to talk about why dashboards fail. Even if you’ve heard us chat about dashboard-y things before, this conversation with hosts Sarah and Fi was an absolute delight. Give it a listen on your favorite podcast platform.

We’ve heard asks from a few folks if Chart Chat LIVE will be back at the Tableau Conference this year, and unfortunately it wasn’t in the cards thanks to schedule conflicts.

If you’re looking to get your copy of Dashboards That Deliver signed, you can find Jeff at the Tableau Tip Battle (where he’s the reigning champ from 2025).

Over the next few weeks, you can also find us at:

Data Innovation Summit, Stockholm, Sweden - Andy is doing the opening keynote entitled “Why human insight is more important than ever in the age of AI” (there are live and virtual tickets available)

Data Viz for Public Health Workshop (virtual) - Amanda is hosting a virtual workshop over on Maven, designed to teach you how to build better charts with a focus on public health data stories. (Use code vizresponsibly for 50% off the registration fee)

Dreamin’ in Data (Chicago, IL) - Amanda is speaking on the keynote panel around Women Leading in Data and AI and doing a short talk on why visualizing data responsibly is a team sport. Conference is May 19-20, with an optional workshop day on May 21.

We love meeting folks in person, so please say hi if you see us at an event!

Love Chart Chat? Two of the best ways to make sure you don’t miss an episode (and help more people discover our delightful data banter) are sharing these posts and by subscribing to our channel on YouTube.

Subscribe now

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Why movement grabs our attention

Movement is a preattentive attribute that helps us see patterns in information before we even realize we're processing them.

That can take many visual or functional forms, including:

• Directional arrows that create the idea of movement.

• Components of data visualizations appearing as you scroll down a page or click through a slide deck creating the effect of moving pieces

• Actual video or gif formats that animate the data

Adding animations into a visualization helps to guide the reader through the design, and can allow for the slow reveal that clearly tells a sequential data story. Plus, it helps direct where the viewers eyes are looking at any given point in time, which Andy has made a case for as the one presentation skill everyone needs to master.

For the Olympics, animating results also adds to the visual metaphor. We’re watching a sport with movement down a hill or track and can connect data points on pace and photo finishes (often in seconds!) to visuals.

Three charts we loved

Here are a three of the charts we chatted about on our latest episode. Give it a watch to see the others and hear all of the banter that makes Chart Chat so fun!

The Ski Spedometer

Amanda was watching Alpine skiing with her six year old and loved the spedometer in the upper left of the screen that gave a sense of just how fast skiiers were flying down the hill. Adding the context that the skiiers were going faster than we sometimes drive on the highway led to a big, “WHAT?” of disbelief from the tiny human.

The Vertical Timeline

A common goal of Olympic visualizations is to capture the photo finish of many races when the best in the world are competing.

The New York Times featured a line chart with a vertical orientation and an indexed x-axis comparing the pace of the three medal winners and the fourth place finisher who just missed the podium by a fraction of a second. The chart showcases just how close the times were for Johnson (gold) and Aicher (silver).

Andy makes the case on Chart Chat 69 that while this chart is beautifully designed, it would tell an even more engaging data story with a few morphs to show the movement down the hill and a couple of text boxes animating what’s happening at each moment.

Throwback to the Summer Games: Bob Beeman’s exceptional jump

Last in our animation highlights, Steve takes us back to the Summer Olympics and Bob Beeman’s long jump record which didn’t just break a record, it shattered one. The animated video from the New York Times is worth a full watch through the 2 minute 45 second run time.

It was the chart the followed the video that prompted some controversy on Chart Chat though: Is a basketball court a more familiar scale for a global audience?

Join us next week to talk about data viz in unique spaces and the impacts of GenAI on data storytellers

Where we engage with data makes a difference. What are the unique challenges and opportunities when your audience is engaging with data on massive digital displays, rather than their laptop screens or mobile phones? Join Amanda for a chat with Jen Snelders about dashboards as part of digital signage on Tuesday, March 24.

Then, on Wednesday, Gabrielle Mérite, founder of Figures & Figures, joins Andy to discuss the impact GenAI is having on data storytellers. We’ll talk about how the speed AI provides doesn’t equate to improvements; in fact, it makes our work worse. We’ll talk about the risks of embracing AI in our data workflows. And we’ll discuss what we, and LLM makers, should do.

You can always find the latest updates on where we’re speaking or teaching in public events over on the Dashboards That Deliver Events and Workshops page.

If you enjoy Chart Chat, we’d love to have you subscribe here on Substack and on our YouTube channel, to make sure you never miss an episode!

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This is Andy saying “hi” and bringing you a Chart Chat 68 recap. Here’s what I have for you:

• My most important tip for presenting data

• A nod to magicians who also know the same secret

• Where can you find me and my Chart Chat cohosts soon

• (including Chart Chat #69: Our Favourite Olympics Charts)

In our last Chart Chat, I shared my one overriding principle whenever I share a chart:

Control Where Your Audience’s Eyes Are Looking.

Charts, even simple bar charts, are cognitive barrages for your audience. Your audience has no idea where to look. Your job is to guide their eye through the data display

The good news is: it’s easy. Here are three ways I do this, each of which I demoed in the show. These tips apply whether you’re presenting virtually or live.

Use Shapes in PowerPoint

One method is to put arrows, shapes or other indicators over your charts. Those big red arrows in the image above? Your audience cannot help but look at them.

There’s an added bonus to this method: each slide acts as a script prompt to you while you present. When you click, the arrow shows up and reminds you exactly what your next point was going to be.

Use a good clicker/mouse.

Look: if you deliver presentations, you need a great clicker.

The Logitech Spotlight transformed how I present. The above image is taken from Chart Chat Live at the Tableau Conference in 2025. I’m using the spotlight feature to lead people around the chart. Check out the full clip here.

The Logitech MX Master mouse also has the spotlight functionality built in, so you can bring this power to your virtual presentations, too.

Morphs and cropped images

The final trick is to use two excellent features in PowerPoint: Cropped Images and Morph Transitions. It’s easier to see than it is to explain, so check out the clip.

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Magic helped me learn this

A quick side note: I spent a lot of the last 15 years doing close-up magic, too. Learning the art of misdirection helped me realise the importance of controlling peoples’ eye in presentations. Below is an episode of Talk Data To Me with magician and psychologist Gustav Kuhn, where we talked about the topic. (check out my Covid hair!)

In other news

• In our next Chart Chat episode, we’re going to review our favourite charts from the Olympics. Join us on March 12, 3pm GMT.

• What do you think about Chart Chat? Please fill out our survey.

• Steve is on the DataFam TUG (tonight: Tuesday) for an AMA session as the TUG celebrates their one year anniversary this week

• Amanda will be talking about shifting from desktop to digital display and how our design decisions change when dashboards are on big screens with the team at SkyKit

• Andy is doing his How To Speak Data course at Data Decoded in London in April. He’s also delivering the keynote at the main event, so do go say hi.

• He’s speaking in Stockholm in May at the Data Innovation Summit on the topic of Humanity and AI.

• He’s also started a new video series, “The AI Analyst?” Andy’s goal: try to decipher how AI is changing the role of the data analyst. Follow him on LinkedIn to keep updated.

• Do you wish you had a one-page design cheat sheet for making great dashboards? Of course you do! Guess what? We have one in our members’ area on DashboardsThatDeliver.com.

This month, we’re all in on charts from the Olympics, which serve up a mix of medal counts, animated figures, and more that feature more little flag icons than just about any other topic.

Join us Thursday March 12 for our Olympic lightning round. When you tune in live, you can join the conversation in the chat and hop over to Zoom for our after party that runs for 15 minutes after the live show concludes.

What do you want to see on Chart Chat?

November 27, 2018 is the datestamp on the first episode of Chart Chat, so perhaps we’re overdue to ask: what do you want to see on Chart Chat?

Over 7+ years, we’ve added a host, created our own channels, written another book, and produced 68 shows across a wide range of topics. We’ve even done Chart Chat live at the Tableau Conference, which was one of the highest rated sessions the last few years.

As we approach Episode 70, we want your feedback! If you’ve watched even one episode of Chart Chat, please fill out our survey to share your thoughts about the show and what you’d like to see from us in future episodes.

If you’re new to Chart Chat, welcome! We’d love for you to subscribe so you never miss an episode or a note, including highlights from the show and industry insights.

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(New to Chart Chat or missed a recent episode? You can find all of our past episodes over on YouTube. Subscribe there and you’ll never miss an episode!)

Topic #1: Box plots

Love them? Hate them? Confused by them?

In case you’re thinking of box plots as squares, a reminder that they’re a classic technique for displaying statistical findings. The range-bar method was introduced by data viz pioneer Mary Eleanor Spear (1952) and the box-and-whisker plot defined by John Tukey (1970), so they’ve been a classic chart option for decades.

Jeff will break down the basics of the chart components, and then we’ll talk about when we use them (or not). Bring your questions and personal opinions to add them to the chat or to share in our zoom afterparty (which happens after every episode for our live viewers).

Topic #2: How we prep for data talks

After box plots, we’ll give you a behind the scenes look at how we prep for Chart Chat and other data presentations.

Across the four of us, we’ve developed and delivered thousands of talks, classes, workshops, and keynotes, but each has our own approach to get ready to deliver a world-class talk.

This topic originated when Steve asked us about it on one of our regular catchups—where many great ideas come from—and we put a pause on the discussion so we could talk it through live with you.

Talking about dashboards on PolicyViz with Jon Schwabish

On last week’s episode of the PolicyViz Podcast, Amanda chatted with Jon Schwabish about why dashboards fail and design tips for building dashboards users actually want to use.

The pod hits on ideas from our book, Dashboards That Deliver, and Amanda’s own experience building dashboards.

You can watch the pod on YouTube or find it on your favorite podcast app. Jon writes , which is another great resource for learning about data viz.

Don’t forget to sign up for Chart Chat this Wednesday, and if you’re new to the Chart Chat newsletter, subscribe so you don’t miss any of our data viz wisdom.

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We’ve moved!

For more than five years, we’ve written a montly-ish newsletter sharing insights, upcoming events, and recommended reading on charts and dashboards. This month, we’re moving to a new home here on Substack.

If you subscribed to our newsletter (previously hosted on Mailchimp), you won’t see any gaps in your subscription.

Just discovering Chart Chat? Subscribe so that you don’t miss a post!

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1. About the Chart Chat team

Subscribing to the Chart Chat newsletter delivers insights and events from four data experts:

• Andy Cotgreave, former Senior Tableau Evangelist passionate about making data visualization and data communication more accessible

• Amanda Makulec, health data visualization expert and former Executive Director for the Data Visualization Society, who is on a mission to help people visualize data responsibly

• Jeff Shaffer, Director of the Applied AI Lab at the University of Cincinnati Lindner School of Business and former executive at Unifund

• Steve Wexler, Chief Chart Looker-atter for Data Revelations and the expert on survey data visualization

Between the four of us, we’ve written three books (Dashboards That Deliver, The Big Book of Dashboards, and The Big Picture), hosted 68 episodes of Chart Chat Live (and counting!), and delivered hundreds of keynotes and talks on all things data visualization.

You can connect with us on LinkedIn or find more on our full bios.

2. More ways to join the conversation

Every Chart Chat episode, we open with the reminder that you are welcome to join the conversation in YouTube chat, LinkedIn comments, and our Zoom after party for each episode.

Something that we’re excited about here on Substack: you can comment, share insights, and connect with other Chart Chat subscribers on the discussion page and in comments on our posts.

3. What to expect

We share a monthly newsletter with:

• Announcements about Chart Chat Live, our monthly livestream show hosted on YouTube and LinkedIn

• Details about upcoming talks and workshops, occasionally including discount codes for paid events

• Insights on charts, dashboard design, and more from our reflections on the industry, plus charts we’re seeing the wild that we love or that catch our eyes as T.U.R.D.s (Truly Unfortunate Representations of Data).

Occasionally, we share additional mid-month posts with reflections or reminders about upcoming events. Never spammy, always practical.

We’re glad you’re here.

In a world where data visualization conversations increasingly split across platforms, it’s great to see our community pop up with comments on Chart Chat Live and say hello in real life at the occasional data conference or meetup.

The data world is changing fast as genAI tools reshape how we do some of our work, making our human conversations about charts and data more important than ever before.

January 2026 Newsletter

Happy new year! It’s a new year with new charts, new innovations in the data visualization world, and some new features for Chart Chat.

This year we’re shortening our chats to a 45-minute show format with a 15-minute afterparty for you to chime in with your thoughts. We’ll continue the banter from the four of us that we know you love! We’ll also add more one-on-one interviews with one host and a guest in between our monthly shows.

What’s not changing is our focus on data visualization, charts, and data communication, sharing actionable ideas and our real-world experiences.

Coming up, we’ve got:

• Chart Chat 67

• a new dashboard design cheat sheet , and

• registration is open for Steve’s Building World Class Business Dashboards, workshop if you need to level up your dashboard design skills.

Plus, if you’ve watched at least one episode of Chart Chat, please share your thoughts as we continue to make the show even better for you.

Read on for all the details, and we’ll see you next week on Chart Chat!

Amanda, Andy, Jeff, and Steve

Coming up soon

Chart Chat 67

Steve scraped a fascinating data set on the talk time we each spend on Chart Chat that we’ll dig into, along with debating the design decisions on a seemingly simple bar chart from Pew Research.

Join us live to chime into the conversation te

Register to join us live

We want to hear from you, Chart Chat viewers

Following the theme of ‘looking at our own data’, we’d love to hear from you if you’re a Chart Chat viewer!

Fill out this quick survey to help us make the experience of signing up for and joining Chart Chat even better.,

Complete our short survey

Building World Class Business Dashboards Workshop

Join Steve on February 24 and 26 for his building world class business dashboards workshop. You’ll leave with new design ideas to improve the speed to insight in your dashboards and engage your users as partners throughout the design process. Join from anywhere in the world for this virtual workshop!

Reserve your spot

New resource

In Dashboards That Deliver, we dedicated a full chapter to dashboard layout and design. The most sophisticated data engineering workflows and beautiful individual charts can fail to deliver for users when we ignore other design principles.

Our new design cheat sheet highlights key principles for designing effective dashboards. Sign up once for the Dashboards Fan Club and you can access the downloadable PDF, plus templates and our NotebookLM explorer for the book!

Download free guide

Share your insights on the state of the data viz industry

Each year, the Data Visualization Society runs the State of the Industry Survey, which closes on January 31 for reflections on 2025.

If you read this newsletter and create charts (even occasionally!), you can respond! The  summary results from the survey are made available for anyone to analyze, making the survey an exceptional community asset.

Take the survey →

💡 DTD Tip of the Month

Once you’re in wireframing mode, test your charts with real data (even sample data!) as soon as you can. Otherwise, you may have charts that look very insightful in your mockup but fall flat because of the shape of the data.

Never experienced ‘the wireframe trap’ yourself? Join Chart Chat on January 29 to hear how each of us approaches adding in real data in our wireframes and mockups.

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Chart Chat Wrapped + a refreshed survey data course

Join us Wednesday at 11AM ET for Chart Chat Wrapped, where we reflect on highlights from the year. We’ll be cheeky and call this an ‘anything but the book’ retrospective, since we want to focus on other favorite charts and industry themes from the year.

Register to add the event to your calendar for reminders, or click to join us live on LinkedIn or YouTube!

Register for Chart Chat Wrapped

Steve knows survey data visualization better than just about anyone. His signature course, Visualizing Survey Data Using Tableau, just got a refresh including…

• Updated content to reflect changes in Tableau

• 111-page attendee guide with clear step-by-step instructions and illustrations

• Over three hours of video recordings

• Free access to Steve’s monthly "what's on your mind" sessions

• LIFETIME access to the course

But... the price will increase from $299 to $399 on January 15.

If you are interested, make sure to purchase your lifetime access before the price goes up.

Learn more and level up your survey data skills

In case you missed it…

In the latest Open Visualization Academy newsletter, Melissa Strong breaks down why DTD should be your next read and what makes it different than the Big Book of Dashboards.

We loved her deep dive into the new book and the dedication in reading them back to back! If you’ve been on the fence around if Dashboards That Deliver is for you, she delivers one of the most comprehensive reviews published to date.

Why DTD should be your next read

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November is a month of gratitude and giving thanks in the US.

As the year wraps up, we want to thank each of you who has read Dashboards That Deliver, shared about the book with your communities, written a review, and joined us for one of our book talks or workshops.

2025 has been a year of incredible data books, including new releases from friends, like the team at storytelling with data, and first time authors like Chris Dalla Riva, who will join us for Chart Chat this month for a conversation about data and music.

This month, you’ll find us doing a few more talks before the year wraps up, including a few Tableau User Groups and speaking at the Budapest BI Forum. You can always stay updated on upcoming events on our Events page.

With gratitude,

Amanda, Andy, Jeff & Steve

Upcoming Events

Chart Chat

Join us on November 20 with musician, author, and fellow data nerd Chris Dalla Riva about his new book, Uncharted Territory: What Numbers Tell Us about the Biggest Hit Songs and Ourselves.

Register to join us live →

Dashboards That Deliver Fan Club

Find downloadable resources and a NotebookLM for exploring the content in the book on our FREE dashboards fan club page. Sign up once and get lifetime access to new resources as they’re released.

Sign up here →

Follow us on LinkedIn for weekly insights

If you want more insights around data visualization design, dashboards, and the intersection of AI and analytics, follow us on LinkedIn! From alerts about free events to practical tips on data visualization, LinkedIn has become one of our primary platforms for sharing insights.

You can find our LinkedIn pages and personal websites on our Dashboards That Deliver author page.

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October 14, 2025

Three weeks out from publication day and we’ve got three ways you can dig into dashboards and data viz with us:

• Join us for Chart Chat on October 30 with the storytelling with data crew to talk about the power of chart makeovers.

• Explore the themes and insights from the book with our new NotebookLM chat page.

• Find more supplemental resources (including the new notebook) on the Dashboards Fan Club, which launched last week.

Finally, we continue to be delighted to see your posts on social media showing your copies of the book.

Thank you so much. If you could add a review on Amazon (no matter how you got your book), that would be fantastic: more reviews help other people discover the book.  

Amanda, Andy, Jeff & Steve

Chart Chat with storytelling with data

We’re teaming up with Storytelling with Data for our next Chart Chat. To mark the publication of their new book, Before & After, we’ll be diving into some of their makeovers. Join us LIVE on Oct 30 at 11am ET and bring your questions to the conversation!

Register to join us live

Do you want to explore Dashboards That Deliver as a conversation?

We’ve created a Google Notebook LLM containing the text of the book. You can use it to ask questions and get answers based on our framework, the 15 scenarios, and 9 essays. We’ve found it really useful. It does, of course, lack all the supporting images, as well as some of the nuance, so it doesn’t replace a read through the full text.

You can access the LLM from our Fans page on DashboardsThatDeliver.com (it’s free!). Click on Andy’s video below to see how the LLM works 👇

Upcoming Events

Join us for upcoming author talks

Andy, Amanda, and Jeff are giving talks in October and November across continents about Dashboards That Deliver. We would love to see you there!

Upcoming in-person events are happening in Milwaukee, WI, Minneapolis, MN, and Budapest, Hungary, plus virtual events with the Chicago Tableau User Group and CHI Hack Night (which anyone can tune into!).

More details and registration links→

Interested in having us talk to your community group or organization? Reply to this email and we’d be happy to chat - we love sharing about the Dashboards That Deliver framework and insights from the dashboard scenarios with data enthusiasts.

Join our new Dashboards Fan Club

Books aren’t the best place for templates and detailed guides when you’re already nearing 500 pages. But we want to make sure you have the tools you need to put our design framework into action.

Join the newly launched Dashboards Fan Club, our community site where we’ll continue to add templates, guides, and resources, including select dashboards from the book. The Google Notebook (above) is the latest resource we’ve added to our Fan Club pages.

It’s free to sign up and sure to be a go-to resource for dashboard designers. Once you join, you can download six resources to improve how you do Dashboard Discovery.

Join the free Dashboards Fan Club

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September 30, 2025

We’re one week post-publication day and love to see your joy as the book arrives in mailboxes around the world! Keep sharing those selfies and tagging us, and don’t forget to pop over to Amazon and leave a review as you dive in.

The book is a great read for a team, to help you speak a shared language about the dashboard design process, or for professors to use as a textbook. If you adopt parts of our framework, we’d love to hear about it.

We had nearly 2,500 attendees join us live for our launch events with Datacamp last week, but if you missed out or want more time for Q&A: join us Tuesday for Chart Chat!

And read on for other upcoming events and our new Dashboards Fan Club where you can access new resource and templates.

- Andy, Amanda, Jeff, and Steve

Upcoming Events

Chart Chat

Join us Tuesday, September 30 for our Ask Us Anything session all about Dashboards That Deliver. Questions about the framework, the book, and the book writing process are all welcome - tune in live to be part of the conversation!

Register to join us live

Dashboards that Deliver Workshop

6-7Join Amanda in Washington, D.C. on October to reframe how you create dashboards in our new workshop. You’ll learn practical approaches to understanding user needs, design decisions, and  launching dashboards that deliver for your stakeholders.

Use code ‘newsletter’ for $100 off the two day workshop pass.

Last chance to register

Join us for upcoming author talks

Andy and Amanda are giving talks in September and October about Dashboards That Deliver. across continents. We would love to see you there!

Our in-person talks are in London, Columbus, OH, Washington D.C., and Milwaukee, WI, with virtual talks for data communities and Tableau User Groups in Chicago, IL and Minneapolis, MN.

More details and registration links→

Join our new Dashboards Fan Club

Books aren’t the best place for templates and detailed guides when you’re already nearing 500 pages. But we want to make sure you have the tools you need to put our design framework into action.

Join the newly launched Dashboards Fan Club, our community site where we’ll continue to add templates, guides, and resources, including select dashboards from the book.

It’s free to sign up and sure to be a go-to resource for dashboard designers. Once you join, you can download six resources to improve how you do Dashboard Discovery.

Join the free Dashboards Fan Club

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September 23, 2025

Today is the official day: Dashboards That Deliver is available!

We love seeing your reactions to the book, which have started to pop up across social media as advanced copies arrived in mailboxes around the world. A few lucky readers received their books before our author copies arrived!

Thanks to Bj Price, Diana Ackerman, and Lisa Trescott for sharing!

Keep tagging us in your posts! It’s a delight as authors to hear from you. We read every note.

Curious to get a peek inside the book? Give Emilia Ruzicka’s book review of Dashboards That Deliver  over on Nightingale, The Journal of the Data Visualization Society.  She writes:

“At nearly 500 pages, the book may seem intimidating, but inside, it provides an accessible guide to tackling the dashboard design process, augmented by breakdowns of real-world scenarios and some broader discussions of hot dashboard topics.“

You can also oin us next week for Chart Chat, which will feature an Ask Me Anything all about the book - registration details below.

With gratitude,

Amanda, Andy, Jeff & Steve

Upcoming Events

Chart Chat #63: Ask Us Anything

Andy, Amanda, Jeff & Steve talk about the good, the bad, and the scaredy cats of data visualization in our monthly live show and virtual after party, where you get to join in on the conversation.

Register to join us live →

Dashboards that Deliver Workshop

Reframe how you create dashboards. Join Amanda October 7-8 in Washington D.C. for a new workshop, where you’ll learn practical approaches to understanding user needs, design decisions, and launching dashboards that deliver for your stakeholders.

Learn more and register →

Looking for more events, including live talks near you? Keep up with the authors and our Dashboards That Deliver talks on our Events and Workshops page.

If you’re interested in having the authors speak to your company or community group, just reply to this email and we’re happy to chat!

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Dashboards That Deliver is out in less than a week! In this shorter-than-usual newsletter, we call your attention to two things:

• How and why to buy Dashboards That Deliver

• Join us on Chart Chat (Sep 30th) for a special launch-week “Ask Us Anything” episode

Why buy the book?

We’re thrilled to bring you a framework that will help you build dashboards, and other data applications, that succeed. Alongside the framework, we have 15 real-world scenarios explaining successes and challenges others have faced.

📚 You can pre-order the book on Amazon or with a local bookstore through Bookshop. Preorders really help us - the sellers’ algorithms favour books with presales, so if you are thinking of ordering, we’d really appreciate you getting the order in early! 📚

Chart Chat #63: Ask Us Anything

To celebrate launch week, we’re hosting a special episode of Chart Chat: you can ask us anything! We’ll be live on Sep 30, 11am EDT. You can come along with questions, or add one when you register.

All four of us are doing lots more events in the next few months. Do come to see us, live or virtually, if you can.  You can see all our activies on https://dashboardsthatdeliver.com/events.

We hope you enjoy Dashboards That Deliver, and we look forward to seeing your reactions (please share them!)

- Andy, Amanda, Jeff and Steve

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