Dates
Monday 24 – Tuesday 25 November 2025 (2 DAYS ONLINE)
Fee structure
Students
400 NZD
Everyone else
800 NZD
Enrol
If you need to pay via an Internal Journal within the University of Auckland or want to enrol several members of a team, please email nzssncourses@auckland.ac.nz.
For credit card and invoice payments, we have a new system through the University’s Event Services team, linked below. This also allows for one to register on behalf of a team member, so we can finally be sure we have the correct details for the person attending, rather than just for the person paying, but you can only enrol for one person at a time.
Course outline
Studies have shown that most readers will only spend 3–8 seconds looking at each plot in a report before deciding whether to invest more time examining the results, or to move on with the report (Nussbaumer Knaflic 2015).
As data illustrators, we need to design plots very carefully, so that within the very brief time window this gives us, we:
- highlight the key pattern that we want readers to take away from the plot (do not expect readers to be able to identify this for themselves)
- motivate readers to a “Call to Action” (to perform an action or make a certain business decision)
- motivate readers to invest additional time and mental effort in discerning what else they might be able to learn from the plot.
This workshop has two objectives:
- To teach the design principles required to make plots that really stand out for the reader
- To teach the practical skills required to create these plots within Excel.
This course is relevant to any employee or consultant who is writing reports or presenting data in ways that really need to stand out to their readers.
Day one
- Types of plots
- What is a Key Message?
- What is a Call to Action?
- What is Instant Recognition?
- Producing different basic plots in Excel
- Preparing your data for visualisation
Day two
- Using components of plots to best achieve Instant Recognition
- Colour, size, and location
- Reference lines and arrows
- Titles, text annotations, and footnotes.
If you want any further advice on whether this course is right for you, please email nzssncourses@auckland.ac.nz and we will put you in touch with the instructor.
Instructor
Mark Griffin is Director of Insight Social Research & Statistics, an Australian organisation that focuses on research methodologies, including survey design and statistics for public health, monitoring, and evaluation, for government agencies, non-government organisations, and academic institutions. Mark has presented courses around Australia for many years, including many for ACSPRI, which has provided many of our NZSSN instructors over the years.