According to the State of The Data Viz Industry Survey, the percent of respondents who used “pen and paper” to create charts, maps, and graphs ranged between 25 and 31 percent from 2019 to 2022 but then shot up to 58 percent in 2023 and 60 percent in 2024. This was the biggest increase of any of the technologies including Power BI, Tableau, and Excel. With so many applications out there to create sleek data visualizations, why are so many drawn to this low-tech, old-school technique?
The short answer is: I don’t know. But I have some ideas . . .
Hand-drawn visualizations are relatable.
We humans seem to be drawn to anything that suggests humanness. Pata Gogova’s What is (not) love? visualization mixes hand-drawn elements with charts created with Tableau to effectively draw our attention to certain aspects of the visualization. “A handmade visualisation can lend a feeling of friendliness to a story,” notes Amelia McNara, “Quite often, computer-generated visualisations feel sterile and can be inaccessible to certain audiences.”
Source: Pata Gogova on Tableau Public
Hand-drawn visualizations suggest uncertainty.
In her Ted Talk called 3 Ways To Spot A Bad Stat, Mona Chalabi emphasizes the importance of showing uncertainty when presenting data. She does that by using hand-drawn charts like the one below. Its unpolished look perhaps prevents viewers from unconsciously accepting what is shown. The result may appear more honest than a sleek presentation with all the requisite disclaimers about the limitations of the data in small type below the chart.
Source: Mona Chalabi on Ted Talks
Hand-drawn visualizations aid exploration.
They aren’t limited by an application’s capabilities and thus allow you to think outside the box plot, bar chart, or line graph. And, as Stefani Posavec and Georgia Lupi (who have written several books on visualizing personal data by hand) note, drawing aids memory. Even if you end up visualizing your data digitally, beginning with a pen and paper will help you to explore and absorb your data.
Source: flickr
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Let’s talk about YOUR data!
Got the feeling that you and your colleagues would use your data more effectively if you could see it better? Data Viz for Nonprofits (DVN) can help you get the ball rolling with an interactive data dashboard and beautiful charts, maps, and graphs for your next presentation, report, proposal, or webpage. Through a short-term consultation, we can help you to clarify the questions you want to answer and goals you want to track. DVN then visualizes your data to address those questions and track those goals.