# S2 E2: Byte - Data Viz literacy.

> This is content from just-tim, the data-and-analytics channel by Tim Ngwena (formerly 'Tableau Tim'). Tim has 12+ years of hands-on BI experience and covers Tableau most of all, plus Power BI, Looker, Hex, SQL and data modelling, the analytics industry, and the craft of doing the job — always tool-agnostic and honest about the trade-offs.

- **Author:** Tim Ngwena (just-tim, https://just-tim.com/about)
- **Published:** 2024-04-22
- **Format:** Video · 44 min watch · transcript available
- **Topics:** Data visualisation, Community, Industry trends
- **Canonical:** https://just-tim.com/posts/s2-e2-byte---data-viz-literacy
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbipv5o9t5s

In this bite-sized episode of What So What Now What, my co-host Ravi and I unpack data and visualisation literacy. We work through what literacy really means, how researchers have tried to measure it, why people retain so little from the charts they see, and the factors that genuinely influence how a visualisation lands.

## Key takeaways

- Visualisation literacy builds in levels: extracting information, spotting trends and relationships, then comparing and comprehending to draw higher meaning, with lasting recall being the true mark of impact.
- Most people first encounter charts at school and later mainly through news and work, and recognition is shockingly low even for basics, with only around 63% identifying a line chart and 75% a bar chart.
- Network and Sankey-style diagrams are simultaneously the least recognised and hardest to read, so if you use them, build in legends, guides or a simple example to bridge the gap.
- Five factors most influence what people take from a visualisation: subject matter, trust, time, confidence and skill, and emotion, with great design mattering most through emotion and barely registering in recall.
- Social learning lifts literacy: people borrow language from peers, so embedding champions and community initiatives like Makeover Monday raises everyone's ability to read data.

## Chapters

- 0:00 Intro, laryngitis and listener feedback
- 2:22 Podcast artwork and show notes
- 3:40 What visualisation literacy means
- 7:51 The levels of data literacy
- 9:42 What we actually remember from a viz
- 13:43 The museum study on chart recognition
- 23:38 The social element of literacy
- 27:31 So what: factors that influence recall
- 39:29 Design, emotion and white space
- 43:16 Wrap-up and podcasting bonus

Watch the full video, read the transcript and use chapter deep-links on the page: https://just-tim.com/posts/s2-e2-byte---data-viz-literacy

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just-tim — Data and analytics, with a point of view. · https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7HYxRWmaNlJux-X7rNLZyw · https://twitter.com/TableauTim · https://www.linkedin.com/in/timngwena