According to Kirk (2016), 

The essence of "Formulating Your Brief" is to "identify the

context in which your work will be undertaken and then define its aims: it is the
who, what, where, when and how." It could be formal or informal as any project you
think you must make it. This phase is where you create a vision for your work.

Reference

Kirk, A. (2016). Data Visualisation: A Handbook for Data Driven Design.  Thousand

Oaks, CA:  Sage Publications, Ltd.
Initial Post
Why is it so important to formulate your brief for a data presentation? Discuss some
ways you would implement to formulate an effective brief. What are some advantages
to your methods? What are some disadvantages?

1.

As a general thumb rule in any presentation, it is essential to set some standards,

expectations, and outcomes out of it. It is crucial to formulate a brief for a data presentation
to ensure that both the presenter can project to the audience what they will get out of the
presentation and create interest in them (Hollebrands& Lee, 2020). Similarly, the design brief
is focused on the results and outcomes of the design and the design project’s business
objectives but should not attempt to deal with the design’s aesthetics. Finally, the audience
should be aware of limitations, and measures are taken to overcome the limitations. Data
presentation has to be seen as a requirement but not as an option which provides application
user great experience (Kirk, 2016).
Ways to formulate briefing effectively
One of the ways is First to understand our platform limitations, ways to overcome it, etc.,
Next, formulate about the background of the project or data, gather requirements which will
help us in setting the tone of our data presentation, and come up with better options based on
stake holder’s requirements and able to project the issues that may emerge in future (Kirk,
2016). We need to understand our platform limitations, or better ways for data presentation in
order to suggest better options to the stakeholders if we know the limits of the Later on
highlighting the challenges and objectives, describing the intended target audience, and
walking through the competitive landscape. For example, sometimes we can go just with a
line chart for quarterly revenue vs. estimate of the company instead of going with regular
table presentation, which will be easier for the audience understand, and it is visually
appealing to the eyes than the later one (Kirk, 2016).
Advantages
By understanding the stakeholders’ requirements and expectations ahead, we can formulate
the brief more effectively based on the toolset as we will be well aligned with requirements,
which will reduce the re-work (Hollebrands& Lee, 2020).
Disadvantages
It’s a time-consuming process to gather all the requirements, in some cases it may take as
much time as it is required for creating data visualization (Hollebrands& Lee, 2020).

2.

Formulating Data Presentation Brief

            A brief is a document that communicates the aims and objectives of a business or
project to stakeholders and clients. It helps in shaping the main goals and strategies of a
business as well as ensuring that the deliverables are aligned with business needs and
expectations (Kirk, 2016). It also helps in promoting efficient business processes, thus
reducing additional costs. Formulation of a brief is important since it helps in creating clarity
on the vision and context of the work that is about to be undertaken. Data presentation brief
can be created in different types of files such as Google presentation, PowerPoint
presentation, Word document or PDF. It is important to ensure that a brief formulated for
data presentation is informative and digestible by not going too much into details hence
making the very brief complex.
The essential details that help in the formulation of an effective brief are the
description of the company, summary of the project, explanation of the project’s objectives,
definition of the targeted audience, and an outline of the deliverables that will be needed.
Other information that is important for an effective brief is a timeline, budget, key
stakeholders, and competitors, as well as details on message, style, and tone. Charts such as
bar graphs can be used for presenting the data brief to the targeted parties since they are
suitable for presenting data or details that require more time to explain; hence the information
needs to be compacted to visual summations. Presenting data briefs using charts is
advantageous because they are suitable visual presentations, and they can easily be
understood since they are commonly used in the media and businesses (John, 2017). The
disadvantage of using charts is that they require an additional explanation for the audience to
understand them clearly, and they can be manipulated to give false impressions. Charts can
also fail to reveal important patterns, causes, effects, and assumptions.
3.

Briefing of Data presentation

Data presentation is the method of presenting data or information with the help of graph,
charts, statistics and tables. There are several factors which play a prominent role in the
presentation of data. One of the major factors is formulating brief for the data presented. Data
presentation may have several set of charts, graphs, information and variable but it is very
important to formulate the brief. The briefing makes things very easy and understandable
since it places all the valuable information in one place.
Usage of charts is one of the most efficient methods of formulating the brief of data
presentation. Charts including a bar graph, pie chart and the line chart are the best method for
presentation as it is very important to recognize and understand (Kirk, 2016). It easily catches
the attention of the audience since they find the usage of graphs very interesting. Also, the
graphs are very uncomplicated and easy to analyze and understand.
Method of briefing
There are various tips or method to formulate an effective briefing. Some of the common
briefing technique includes, Briefing should be always small and brief. It should not be more
than one or two pages. Another important point is the usage of compact language and the
short abbreviations. The third method is the use of simple or easy format, since noting in the
simple format make things easy to interpret. The speculations should always be avoided in
the briefing. Every detail should be noted logically and according to the facts.
Steps of formulating the briefing
The steps to formulate an effective briefing is as follows: The first step is the encapsulation of
the relevant facts and figure. It is very important as the details should be always accurate and
relevant. The second step is the verification of the details (He, Shin & Tsourdos, 2020). It is
extremely essential to confirm all the user data and other content assembled in the briefing
are real and dependable. The third step is the description or proposal of the situation used in
the briefing. It is also prominent the resolution provided in the briefing should be sensible or
logical. The final step is the editing or the last review of the briefing since it should not
contain a grammatical or spelling mistake. All the above points should be followed while
formulating an effective briefing.
Advantages
There are several advantages to the briefing of data presentation. One of the major
advantages is compact and small content since briefing always have important points and
figures. It renders all the necessary information or data in one place (Arbogast, Delaglio,
Brinson & Marino, 2020). It is also very easy to realize and interpret since it contains the
charts including a bar graph, pie chart and the line chart.
Disadvantages
However, apart from the advantages, there are several disadvantages of data briefing. It may
be helpful for one but may make the other people inactive or lethargic. The other major
disadvantage of it may be a misinterpretation. A briefing of data interpretation may be
difficult to interpret by the other persons or individuals as the short forms, figures or
information might be difficult to understand. But, apart from all these drawbacks, it is a very
useful technique.
References:
Arbogast, L. W., Delaglio, F., Brinson, R. G., & Marino, J. P. (2020). Assessment of the
Higher‐Order Structure of Formulated Monoclonal Antibody Therapeutics by 2D Methyl
Correlated NMR and Principal Component Analysis. Current Protocols in Protein
Science, 100(1), e105.
He, S., Shin, H. S., & Tsourdos, A. (2020). Trajectory optimization for multitarget tracking
using joint probabilistic data association filter. Journal of Guidance, Control, and
Dynamics, 43(1), 170-178.
Kirk, A. (2016). Data visualisation: A handbook for data driven design. Sage.

4.

According to Kirk (2016), the core of Formulating Your Brief is to identify the context in
which your work will be undertaken and then define its aims: it is who, what, where, when,
and how. It could be formal or informal as any project you think you must make it. This
phase is where you create a vision for your work. Data Visualization is the representation and
presentation of data to facilitate understanding (Kirk, 2016).
According to Author Kirk, A. Data Visualization workflow involves in four stages:
Formulating your brief, working with data, establishing your editorial thinking and
developing your design solution.
Formulating your Brief:
The main purpose of this step is to identify the requirement and how to achieve them.
According to Kirk (2016), “In its simplest form, a brief represents a set of expectations and
captures all the relevant information about a task or project”. It is very essential to formulate
the brief as it adds value to the visualization of the data. Formulating the brief by the
concerned stakeholders is essentially important during the implementation of the project
either formally or informally. When you are working with clients, it will be the concern of
parties to have a mutual understanding of the project requirements and some compromise
over the key output. Having a clear understanding of your client’s budget allows you to
effectively manage their expectations as to what their money can get them, while also
controlling how your team uses their time. When initially meeting with your client to scope
out their job, make sure you allocate budget across all disciplines: research, design,
copywriting, development, coordination, testing, and review (Kirk, 2016).
A visualization process that lacks an initially articulated curiosity can lead to a very aimless
solution. For an effective brief, we need to analyze what our client likes to hear like charts,
etc. Make a presentation according to your client scrutiny and the presentation should be
collective and easy to considerate. Projects need to stay on time to stay profitable, that’s why
schedules are a must-have for your briefs. An effective schedule should not only highlight the
final deadline but also identify any progress milestones between the onset and endpoint of the
project. While schedules are vital for keeping your team on track, they can also be valuable
for your clients. Some clients you’ll work with won’t know how long it takes to research,
design. To meet your client expectations, include specific design requirements in you brief,
you can ensure you and your team has everything needed to work efficiently. To create an
effective data set, we need to serve an adequate amount of input to the visualization (Kirk,
2016).

5.

Data visualization deals with the presentation of data to the people a way that it is
easily understood to gain insights. Among the data visualization products that I am already
familiar with are tableau and sisense.
Tableau is of great advantage to the users as it is simple to use. Besides, it has
interactive interfaces for visualizations that facilitate handling of the big data sets in different
operations and different languages. Its visualizations are quick to create due to the
functionalities of drag and drop that enable the user to create a visualization within minutes
(Rajeswari, et al., 2017). Furthermore, it is easy to implement due to the variety of
visualizations that increases the user experience. Besides, it is easy to learn, unlike other
products. In addition to this, it is capable of handling a large amount of data as its tables can
have millions of rows od different data. On the other hand, it disadvantaged as it cannot
schedule or report the notification. Also, its parameters are static (Rajeswari, et al., 2017).
The advantages of sisense include the cloud-based options that are both on public and
private cloud (Levy, 2016). This makes it cheaper to implement and use. Also, it can be
accessed despite the location. Besides, it works well with the big data besides allowing the
users to take the snapshots of the data. Through this, its users can copy the data to the online
elasticube. According to Levy, (2016), it has a dashboard that is well designed, easy to use,
and with a wide variety of functionalities. Its disadvantage is that it’s a heavy application but
it can be overcome by cloud computing (Levy, 2016). Due to these advantages, especially the
cloud computing advantage, I would prefer sisense over tableau.

6.