Dr. Kristen Sosulski, Associate Professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business

Dr. Kristen Sosulski and Bill Ringle discuss data visualization: what it is and what businesses can use it.

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Interview Insights

Top Takeaways from this Interview

• What is deep data and how it’s created from the internal processes within an organization?
• Telling stories is a key application of data visualization.
• Data visualization transforms data into an interface where customers can interact with the facts in a useful way.
• Things to consider when presenting visual data, and why it’s a bad idea to make your audience work too hard.
• How data visualization can be used to make arguments to persuade decision-makers.

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

• 2:26 Why Kristen was inspired by the work of Marshall McLuhan as a young undergrad.
• 3:06 “The medium is the message.”
• 4:16 “I define data visualization as a process for creating data graphics.”
• 5:04 “The process of becoming visual is something that takes time, and begins with what you really want to understand and communicate out to others with regard to your data.”
• 6:47 “Visualization is, in fact, an exploratory tool in addition to a presentation tool.”
• 7:22 “It’s been necessary for me to make data-driven arguments.”
• 8:31 “It becomes clear what we we should do by looking at the data, and knowing where things are successful and where things went awry.”
• 8:58 Examples of how data visualization is used to show change over time.
• 10:52 The story of Samantha Feldman at Gray Scalable.
• 11:30 “We want to think about what the key message is. We want to think about where we are within the industry range and where we’re exceeding it.”
• 14:25 Things to consider when presenting information visually.
• 15:26 “What the presenter is saying should match what’s on the screen.”
• 16:32 Progressive Disclosure: how to walk your audience through what the data means.
• 17:52 “Whatever your metric of success is is what you want to look at.”
• 19:51 “A lot of things are interesting to look at it when you have data, but to make them persuasive, we need to be talking the same language as the stakeholders.
• 20:45 The significance of dashboards and how they interact with an audience
• 24:11 Scooter usage case studyType to enter text
• 27:09 Lightning Round
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Expert Bio

Dr. Kristen Sosulski is an Associate Professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, where she teaches MBA students and executives data visualization, programming and business analytics. She is the Director of the Learning Science Lab for NYU Stern, where she develops immersive online learning environments for business school education.

Kristen is the co-author of the Essentials of Online Course Design: A Standards-Based Guide (Routledge, 2011, second edition, Routledge, 2015) and The Savvy Student’s Guide to Online Learning (Routledge, 2013). Her third book, Data Visualization Made Simple: Insights Into Becoming Visual was just published.

As a leading expert on data visualization, Kristen regularly consults, delivers seminars, and leads workshops on data visualization techniques and best practices. You can find her speaking on the subject at events like Social Media Week NYC, plot.ly’s PlotCon conference, and Tableau’s events and to organizations like the National Association of Public Opinion and the National Economic Research Association.

For more about Dr. Kristen Sosulski, visit her website.

Contact Info for Dr. Kristen Sosulski

• Web address: www.kristensosulski.com

• Travels from: New York

• Social Links: LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | YouTube

Published by Dr. Kristen Sosulski

Resources Mentioned During the Interview

• Marshall McLuhan