Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast is back again with a brand-new episode for a brand-new year. In Episode 14 of the Insightrix Podcast series, we’re talking about market research and data visualization. Data visualization and data representation are an important part of market research reporting because they make data sets that might be difficult to grasp at first glance more understandable and relatable. They merge esthetics with hard data to communicate research stories in ways that words just can’t match. For the episode, we’re joined by Insightrix Creative Lead, Sharday Torgerson. The mastermind behind many of our data representations, Sharday shares her experience in what data visualizations and data representations are and how they differ, how both are used, best practices on their design, the tools she uses and even some ideas about how one can advocate for more graphic-based design in your own organization. If you would like to see a great example of some of the innovative work Insightrix has done to create graphical reporting that can both communicate data effectively AND engage broad audiences with appealing design, check out Insightrix Holiday Spending 2019. Insightrix Holiday Spending 2019 is a web report we prepared to highlight the Christmas retail shopping experience in Saskatchewan that you can download and share. You can also access many Insightrix data visualizations and representations based on our own public work on social media.   Insightrix Research releases new content regularly! Check out the articles on the Insightrix blog for informative articles about everything and anything market research related. You can also access Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast on your favourite podcast player app, including Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and YouTube. Make sure to subscribe to be notified the moment a new episode is published! Episode Transcript [INTRODUCTION] DUNCAN: For the uninitiated, (and for the initiative sometimes for that matter), understanding complex data sets can be a tricky proposition. Sure, there are some of us lucky and awesome folks who can look at a spreadsheet and get to the data story underneath at a glance, but let’s be honest, those are indeed special folks. For many of us, to really dig into a data set and find the narrative that data presents, some level of visualization is going be pretty, darn handy. Data visualizations and data representations present data in ways that are understandable, that are relatable and shareable, and that engage their audience on an aesthetic level as well as an intellectual one. Hello, my name is Duncan McGregor, the Marketing and Communications Coordinator at Insightrix Research in Saskatoon, Canada – and your podcast host. In this fourteenth episode of our podcast series, we’re talking about data visualizations and data representations and market research – what they are, how they’re used, how they are different from each other, their value in market research reporting and more. We’re joined for the episode by Insightrix Creative Lead, Sharday Torgerson, who shares her experience and knowledge of making sense of complex data sets through data representation and visualization. She shares some of the tricks and tips she’s learned, tools she uses, how the practice has changed over the years and even some advice on how to get C-Suite buy-in on adopting more graphic-based reports in your organization. Resource design, our old pal the bar chart and video game start menus – all that and more in this episode of Stories of Market Research: The Insightrix Podcast. [OPENING THEME MUSIC] [INTERVIEW SEGMENT] DUNCAN: We’re here with Creative Lead at Insightrix Research, Sharday Torgerson. How’s it going today, Sharday? SHARDAY: It’s going really well. Thanks for asking. DUNCAN: Thanks for coming back