Data visualization guidelines and resources for human rights researchers and advocates.
Informational, introductory PDF on mapping. Includes brief case studies and resources.
Informational, introductory PDF on information design for non-profits.
PDF about using visual information for action including case studies and resources. Also available for purchase in print.
An informational PDF on data visualization for academic research from the Oxford University.
PDF tipsheet and questions to help write a detailed design brief for commissioning a data visualisation project.
PDF and video overview on monitoring, collecting, analyzing and communicating data for human rights issues. With exercises, key questions, case studies, further readings.
PDF on different chart types and working with them in Excel.
PDF on chart and graph types, and working with them using Tableau.
Online introduction for the public on how to understand data visualizations.
Guide to verifying digital, user-generated content for emergency coverage.
A guide to navigate and integrate digital data in human rights research.
Case studies and practical guidance on creating digital advocacy campaigns.
Guide to practical and ethical considerations for finding, collecting, analyzing, and verifying data.
Brief introduction to frequently used statistical terms and concepts.
An interactive visualization to help understand correlation coefficients.
Guidelines for human rights documentation and data standards.
Illustrated tips for improving and clarifying pie charts and area charts.
Short essay questioning the trade-off of threat (like safety and security) with values (like privacy).
PDF article attempts to ask, address and predict the complex intersections between human rights, security and data.
Academic PDF article on statistical patterns in data specific to killings in Syria and body count in Iraq.
Blog post on data quality, particularly regarding military or political violence. Includes several links to additional sources on this topic.
An exhaustive reference to problems seen in real-world data along with suggestions on how to resolve them.
20-minute TED talk showing trends in human development through data visualization.
9-minute TED talk on the use of visualization as a technique of collaboration and strategic planning.
9-minute video about visualizing data for advocacy from the Center for Economic and Social Rights.
Short video on the significance of visualizing data and information.
5-minute Ignite talk highlighting incorrectly done data visualizations, and a few well-done ones.
Data visualization as a storytelling medium in journalism. 54-minutes.
Demonstration of how Alberto Cairo designed several graphs and maps showcased in his book The Truthful Art.
Videos of presentations at this conference on data visualization and storytelling.
Interviews with data visualization practitioners and researchers
Interviews about data visualization, presentation skills, and presentation design
Conversations on topics in data science between a data scientists and his non-data scientist wife, and longer interviews featuring practitioners and experts on interesting topics related to data
Free PDF and PowerPoint samples from a book on how to create great presentations. Includes case studies.
Online book on creating meaningful content to move audiences. Includes real world examples.
Annotated list of useful data visualization books.
GitHub compilation for data visualization techniques.
The results of an exploratory study of climate data visualizations conducted in tight collaboration with a pool of climate scientists.
Exploratory study of data visualizations as narrative and end-user interpretation.
Presents distorting visualization techniques and measures the deceptiveness of the techniques.
Evidence-based, experimental research on visualization persuasion.
Explores relationship between visualization, understanding and memorability.
Explores narrative visualization and how it differs from traditional forms of storytelling. Includes case studies.
Breaks down the process of creating information visualizations, introduces a graphical user interface, GraphCoiffure to improve workflow.
Reports findings from web-based experiments on audience interaction with interactive data visualizations.
A paper arguing for wider use of visualization tools to open government data achieve its full potential for impact.
A report aimed at helping public sector managers make the most of data visualization tools and practices.
An argument for visualizing complex data to aid in human development initiatives.
Browser-based data visualization platform designed to assist investigative journalists, activists and others in mapping complex business or crime networks.
Tutorials on how to create and share data visuals using the paid, online tool Tableau.
Experimental data visualization web application to gather, visualize, and share data tables.
Free software for interactive network and social graph visualization and analysis.
Create charts and maps in just four steps.
Quick and easy responsive infographics includes design templates, 30+ chart types, and embed/share options.
Quick and easy infographics includes 400+ templates, unlimited customization, and share and print options.
Open-source tool that enables you to build visually-rich interactive timelines.
Mind mapping, network visualization software.
Open source software for data mining and visual programming for novices and experts.
Quickly build/explore visualizations from your Excel files.
Explore different visualization techniques in the browser using spreadsheet data.
Browser based tool to create and publish data driven websites
Free desktop tool for visual exploration of complex datasets to discover correlation patterns.
Simple web-based app creates a web-ready, embeddable, responsive version of a Google Spreadsheet.
A selection of visualization techniques sorted by task. See also Slide Chooser for visual story telling in presentations.
Database of free and Creative Commons licensed icons, searchable by topic.
An open source web app for creating annotated charts
A lightweight javascript library for generating simple, responsive charts.
A curated list of tools, resources and technologies for data visualization.
Easy, drag-and-drop infographic maker.
Map and analyze location data. Multiple product levels.
Tool for developers to build maps for online and mobile apps.
Powerful open source desktop GIS tool with an extensive suite of plugins.
Integrate offline and online mapping. Very useful in areas with limited Internet connectivity.
Perform advanced spatial statistics.
Web-based tool to create timelines with geographic data.
Hosted toolkit display annotated maps in a narrative sequence.
Export web-ready maps from QGIS to Leaflet, an open-source Javascript library.
Enter data into a Google Spreadsheet to plot points on Google Maps or Google Earth.
Ready-made color schemes for maps.
Web-based color palette picker.
Color picker for data scientists to generate and refine palettes of optimally distinct colors.
Interactive tool to choose six sequential colors.
Generate a color palette with strong perceptual differences to use with different categories of data.
A a color scheme for UI design of 12 color-blind safe colors.
A free color blindness simulator for Window, Mac and Linux.
A set of custom color palettes built on top of well-known standards for color use on maps.
A palette generator that picks hues between color endpoints.
Tool for working with 'messy' data to clean, transform, share it.
Turn PDF and other scanned documents into data for analysis, annotation, and publishing online.
Paid service to collect, analyse, visualise and manage data.
Tool for collaborative network analysis.
Scrape data from the internet.
Create reliable, free field surveys.
Software to securely catalog and encrypt sensitive data on off-site servers.
Chrome extension to get data out of web pages and into spreadsheets.
Data wrangling on the desktop for free.
Compilation of tutorials, tips, tools and resources for journalists.
A suite of easy-to-use web tools for beginners that introduce concepts of working with data.
Help automate the process of checking a dataset for errors or potential mistakes.
On data visualization, empathy, and representing people with dots.
How maps reflect and perpetuate relations of power.
Further notes and links from an introductory lecture.
What came after the success of this visualization for advocacy project, despite its reformist intentions.
Beyond visualization, if your goal is social change we must aim to change behavior.
On the use of aesthetics within data narratives.
The results of a needs assessment among human rights researchers and advocates.
Examples of different types of online storytelling using scrolling.
Comprehensive library of data visualization techniques organized by functional purpose.
Reference for different types of visualizations.
Searchable database showcasing different visualization examples.
Over 2,400 examples of charts and visualization techniques using D3.js, sorted by type.
Sort news visualizations by type.
Sort by task, cost, platform and data type.
Project-based tutorials with step-by-step instructions and examples for learning the R programming language from basic to advanced, across different topics including statistics, data manipulation and visualization.
Introductory audio+video course from designer Stefanie Posavec.
90 minute audio and video course on visual design basics.
4-week online course from the University of Illinois
6-day introductory course with daily lab exercises.
Three-credit course about the state of the art in information visualization.
Independent 7-week online course with a focus on visually encoding and presenting data to audiences.
A guide to working with D3 in multiple languages available. Also available in print from O'Reilly.
Syllabus, notes, exercises, and resources from Kieran Healy’s half-semester introduction to visualizing data.
How to adjust raw satellite image data to look more like a realistic picture.
Lecture slides and exercises used by Enrico Bertini in his Information Visualization course at NYU Tandon.
A practical introduction with R and ggplot2
A collection of free, video courses on data journalism and visualization.
This course is a gentle introduction to data basics where you can find data and what to do with it.
For journalists and activists, a practical introduction to the skills needed to analyse data using spreadsheets, allowing you to start looking for stories in data.
Independent courses on fundamentals including: data cleaning, exploring and extracting data, mapping and more.
Introductory 5-module course on working with and producing compelling data stories.
Open-sourced, in-progress handbook with real world examples and case studies.
Big list of syllabi, including some data visualization and storytelling courses.