Kelly Meleshko
Data visualisation enthusiast based in NSW, Australia
What's so good about data?
Print media has always been constrained by space and what can physically be printed.
With the explosion of digial media, many organisations are seizing the new storytelling opportunities that come with this medium.
One part of this is data visualisation. While print media might have included a graph with a story, with digital media we can include a slideshow of graphs, or a map animation showing change over time. Or we can let the user interact with filters or clickable elements.
When I read a story with a bunch of numbers and stats, it doesn't really sink in. But when someone visualises this same data, it becomes much more meaningful and engaging.
What's that got to do with coding?
It helps to understand how stuff works.
If I have ideas about what would help build engagment with online readers, it's really missing a lot of context without some understanding about what is possible on a website and the effort versus reward.
There are some very good (and free!) online tools such as Datawrapper and Flourish that help you build data visualisations without any coding knowledge.
But if you even have a tiny bit of knowledge you are able to really grow what you can do.