Science Communication Strategies for a Changing Lake Superior
It’s a complex world, and the need for clear communication has never been greater. This learning series provides opportunities to build your science communication skills and reflect on how to tell meaningful stories about your work. Hosted by the Lake Superior Reserve’s Coastal Training Program and the Lake Superior Collaborative, this series is designed to help you gain confidence in your communication skills whether you are a scientific researcher, government employee, or in any line of work related to science or Lake Superior coastal management. This series will alternate between virtual workshops and webinars from January through May of 2021.
About the virtual workshop
Have you ever felt that your charts are cluttered or confusing for your audience? Do you struggle to tell a compelling story through data visualization? Data is everywhere and charts and data graphics have never been easier to make, thanks to programs like Excel and Tableau. But as you may have experienced in your own work, designing elegant charts that tell a clear story can be surprisingly challenging!
Fortunately, we can borrow lessons from cognitive brain science and graphic design best practice to help us improve the way we display data to our audiences. This short course will provide you with some quick pointers and tips to help you improve your charts and graphics design. In this mini-workshop, you will learn to:
Recognize common chart design pitfalls
Use handy tricks to “cut the clutter” from charts and focus your audience’s attention
Think about every element of chart as part of a clear story
About the presenter
Karina Heim is the Coastal Training Program Coordinator at Lake Superior National Estuarine Research Reserve, and a data viz enthusiast. She first became enamored with the art of clean chartmaking in graduate school where she realized that every graph and table can stand alone and tell its own story if it is designed well. Later, Karina applied lessons and best practices of data viz design in her work as a comprehensive plan writer, revising public documents to reflect current data trends in a clear, accessible way. In her current position, she works with decision-makers in the Lake Superior basin on coastal issues, where important ideas are spoken through data all of the time. Karina is originally from Fairbanks, Alaska and lived in the western United States for several years before landing in the Midwest. She has a professional background in land use planning and program coordination.