Audience:
Professionals who want to strengthen their ability to work with data and create clear, effective visualizations
Duration:
1 Day
Delivery:
Virtual (2 half days) or in-person (1 full day). Delivered live-virtual across Canada and the US, and in-person in Ottawa–Gatineau (National Capital Region). On-site delivery available for Government of Canada and private-sector teams.
Next public sessions (live-virtual, 2 half-days, $700/person): Oct 26–27 & Dec 1–2, 2026 · Jan 19–20 & Feb 23–24, 2027 — book on our training page.
Course description:
Poorly designed visualizations—whether in charts, reports, dashboards, or presentations—can create confusion and, at worst, lead to misguided decisions. This course introduces participants to core principles of storytelling with data, best practices in visualization and design, enabling them to communicate insights more effectively. Whether working in Power BI, coding in R or Python, building charts in Excel, or presenting in PowerPoint, participants will learn to create clear, impactful, and meaningful visualizations. Participants practise each idea hands-on with free interactive tools they can keep using after the course.
Course overview:
Stories and data stories
Exploring vs explaining: two jobs for a visualization
Storytelling risks and biases
Learning from history
How we see data (raw visual input, pre-attentive processing, Gestalt grouping, attentive cognition)
Decluttering
Colour theory and colour-blind-safe palettes
Layout, dashboards and storyboarding
Creating a narrative: choosing the order and the shape of the story
Choosing a chart: start with the question (compare, change over time, distribution, relationship, part of a whole)
By the end of this course, participants will be able to:
Explain the core principles of data storytelling and why narrative structure improves comprehension
Identify common biases and risks, such as survivorship bias and ignored base rates, that shape how audiences interpret data
Recognize historical examples of effective and ineffective data visualization and apply those lessons
Understand how human perception shapes the way people process charts, patterns, and visual cues
Apply principles of pre‑attentive attributes, Gestalt organization, and attentive cognition to improve clarity
Declutter charts and dashboards so the important message stands out
Use colour theory intentionally to highlight insights, reduce noise, and support accessibility
Build a clear narrative arc that connects context, insight, and action in any data‑driven communication
Select chart types by the question being asked, and explain why some charts are read more accurately than others
Design visualizations that communicate insights clearly across tools such as Power BI, Excel, R, Python, and PowerPoint
Interactive Data Tools for This Course
These tools are free to use anytime — browse them before the course as a preview, work through them live during a session, or come back to them afterward as a refresher.