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Lea Pica is a seasoned digital analytics practitioner, social media marketer and blogger with over 11 years of experience building search marketing and digital analytics practices for companies like Scholastic, Victoria’s Secret and Prudential. Her greatest passion is the stage, her platform for empowering digital practitioners and analytics consultants to present information in a way that gets remembered and inspires action. She is Host of a podcast, the Present Beyond Measure show.
What data visualization is
Data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format with the goal of communicating information clearly and efficiently.
Lea Pica’s top principles of presenting data effectively.
Lea has elaborated the PICA methodology, which teaches you how to present data effectively and inspire action. PICA stands for: purpose, insight, context and aesthetics.
- Purpose. Ask yourself: does this chart have a purpose?
- Insight. By definition, insight is the capacity to gain an accurate and deep intuitive understanding of a person or thing. It tells you the why. The “McKinsey title” is a good example.
- Context. Round out the story as full as possibly you can make it, so you are making a truly informed decision.
- Aesthetics: A lot of aesthetics is around learning principles of visual design that impact cognition or the comprehension of data. Choice of colors and chart detox are great ways to present data effectively.
An example of a famous person who presents data effectively
Al Gore knows how to present data to create real impact, as he showed it during the movie An Inconvenient Truth.
Her recommended tools for presentations
Lea recommends to master the basic tools first: Excel and PowerPoint. She also recommends two extra tools: KeyRocket (it unveils all keyboard shortcuts in Windows and Office), and SlideProof (it’s like a personal proofreader for objects inside PowerPoint slides). Lea offers us exclusive 14-Day Fully Unlocked Trials of these two tools.
Related: Creating Brain-Friendly Presentations
Favorite quotation
“Visualizations act as a campfire around which we gather to tell stories.” — Al Shalloway
Recommended book
Storytelling with data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic
Routine to Shine
Listen to yourself on a weekly basis. Record yourself during your preparation and listen to it to internalize your content.
Links
Lea’s Special Offer for Time to Shine followers
The Present Beyond Measure Show
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