Data Visualisation Guide: A powerful resource to learn more about data
visualisation 
Publication Date/Time
2023-11-27T09:00:00+00:00
Interview with Dr Simon Steuer, Head of Open Data Services Sector of
the Publications Office
Interested in data visualisation? We invite you to explore our Data
Visualisation Guide
[https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/] and dive into
seven subjects to gain a deeper understanding of various aspects
related to visualising data. The guide was created by the Publications
Office of the European Union in collaboration with data visualisation
expert Maarten Lambrechts. Find out more about the guide’s content
and how you can use it in the interview with Dr Simon Steuer, Head of
Open Data Services Sector of the Publications Office, who worked on
the guide together with colleagues from his team. 

 

COULD YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THE GUIDE? WHAT IS ITS PURPOSE AND WHAT
IS IN IT? 

The purpose of the guide is to raise awareness about the importance of
data visualisation skills in general and to provide material to
upgrade the skills of all those who already embarked on that
journey. 

The Data Visualisation Guide has seven chapters. They can be read
independently from each other and include many real-life examples of
data visualisations from the private and public sectors. Examples were
found in the traditional and digital media, including social media.
Links to the source content is always provided, which allows the
examples to be seen in their original context. 

 

WHERE DID THE IDEA TO CREATE THE GUIDE COME FROM? 

We believe data visualisation skills are essential for everybody who
is working with data. It is an extremely powerful tool that allows you
to find errors in your data quickly, communicate your data and extract
information, and make it more understandable for the audience. This is
why the data.europa.eu team organised a series of data visualisation
training courses from 2019 to 2022 for EU staff. The training material
received outstanding reviews by participants, so we wanted to merge it
into a single digital publication. We also wanted everyone to have
access to the guide, so we made it publicly available on
data.europa.eu. 

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Picture1_9.png]
 

FOR WHOM IS THIS GUIDE CREATED? 

It is a useful resource for anyone, from beginners to experts. The
Data Visualisation Guide contains all the information needed to get
started: there are pages about data file formats, about cleaning data,
about tools for data visualisation and about designing
visualisations. 

Independent users with programming skills will find the last two
chapters interesting as they contain information about HTML and
programming languages. 

We already heard that data teams at a big technology company are using
the Data Visualisation Guide as a training resource, and we would be
happy if it could also become a much-used resource across the EU
institutions. 

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Picture2_3.png]
 

WHAT WAS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE OF THIS PROJECT? 

We wanted to create the guide in an interactive format. We looked for
similar interactive and engaging publications and studied the Regions
in Europe
[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/interactive-publications/regions-2023]
publication, published by Eurostat. The main challenge was to
restructure the information in a way that would allow the reader both
to read the guide as a book and to easily find the topic of their
particular need or interest. 

Once the publication was developed, our team carried out user testing
with many colleagues and further adapted the structure based on their
feedback. The final Data Visualisation Guide contains over 400 web
pages, which shows how wide and complex this topic is. 

 

And the last question for Maarten Lambrechts, an expert who drafted
the Data Visualisation Guide, on what he finds special about the
guide. 

The guide is special in its set-up; there are so many ways to navigate
through it and so many things to learn from it, it can also help you
improve the way you communicate your data to the world. 

For me personally, the guide is also special because creating it
allowed me to document everything I know about data visualisation. So,
I thank the Publications Office for giving me the opportunity to make
this guide. 

Even for me, the author, the guide is an excellent resource: if I need
an example of some chart type, or if I forget where to find a certain
tool, I can just go to the guide and find what I need! 

 
[https://data.europa.eu/sites/default/files/img/media/Picture3_1.png]
Data visualisation guide
[https://data.europa.eu/apps/data-visualisation-guide/] is at your
feet. Take the first step.

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