#SWDchallenge: partner up
It’s February, which means it’s time for Valentine’s Day—traditionally a time to think about love and one’s romantic relationships. In recent years, the scope of the season has broadened, inspiring us to take stock of all the relationships in our lives (Galentine’s Day anyone?), and celebrate the meaningful connections we have with other people.
Have you ever heard the phrase, “If you want to go fast, go alone; but if you want to go far, go together?” This is true for many facets of life, including our work. When it comes to effective data communication, there are many benefits to working with someone else, including but not limited to:
Comparing ideas on how to graph the data
Learning about a new tool—or a trick you didn’t know in one you use frequently
The importance of feedback—both giving and receiving
This connection is what we’re going to inspire you to explore in this month’s challenge.
The challenge
Consider the following slide, which shows the effectiveness of an ad campaign. The ad was shown on either TV only or digital only (further segmented by desktop, phone and tablet). The effectiveness was measured in total (left chart) and by week for 6 weeks (right chart). The metric being graphed is incremental reach per 1,000 impressions. (For those unfamiliar with this metric, “incremental reach” defines how much MORE of an audience a specific advertising campaign engages, over and above the audience that existing campaigns are already reaching. So, for instance, your new campaign might engage 500 people per 1,000 impressions, but if 495 of those people would have been reached by other, existing campaigns, then the “incremental reach” would only be 5 per 1,000 impressions, or 0.5%.)
Your challenge is to makeover this slide to improve its impact. The caveat: you must work WITH SOMEONE ELSE to create your remake. There are some additional metrics included in the download, which you may choose to incorporate as you think about how you’d improve its effectiveness. Broadly speaking, make assumptions as needed and take liberties with the intended audience for your remade slide.
WHO SHOULD YOUR PARTNER BE? You are free to choose whomever you like, whether it’s a friend, colleague, or fellow community member (reply to this thread to indicate interest). Your partner doesn’t HAVE to be part of the SWD community, although we’d love for you to encourage them to join.
HOW SHOULD YOU AND YOUR PARTNER COLLABORATE? We won’t get too prescriptive on the partner piece, but here are a few ways you could you utilize another person in this challenge:
Partner up to critique the visual and create a list of improvements to make. You may some helpful framework in the past critique (then recreate) challenge.
Ask for—and incorporate—someone’s feedback in your remake
Utilize a tool SME and learn how to execute your remake in a new tool
Sketch out makeover ideas separately, and then compare to see where you are in alignment before developing a final version
Have your partner role play as different audiences while you iterate through options
WHERE DO YOU GET THE DATA? Download the data and original visuals here. There are some additional metrics which you may choose to incorporate as you think about how you’d improve its effectiveness. Make assumptions as needed for the purpose of improving the slide.
HOW DO YOU SUBMIT YOUR CHALLENGE AS A TEAM? Either you or your partner should share your remade slide in the community by February 28th at 5PM ET. In your commentary, describe your process as completely as you can: how you and your partner decided to work together; what role each of you took in the creation of the makeover; what you learned from the experience; and if there’s any further feedback you’d like from the community. Take some time also to browse others’ submissions, and share your input via comments and datapoints over the course of the month. We’ll be discussing and highlighting some of your submissions for the broader storytelling with data audience in the future, so share as much insight into your makeover as you are comfortable doing.
Related resources
Here are a few related resources. If you are aware of other good ones, please share in your submission commentary.
The power of partnering up for virtual presentations
Critiquing a visual: questions to ask