What is your biggest frustration doing data visualization?

BY SHIRLEY WU

Earlier this year, my friend Elijah made a bold claim: that most people in data visualization end up leaving the field, because there's something wrong with the current state of data visualization. It stirred quite a bit of conversation, and resulted in a community survey and a Medium publication. The survey itself had 45 questions, and ranged from asking for demographic information to the role of data visualization in the respondent's job. It garnered 981 responses, and out of curiosity, I decided to dig into their answers.

Since none of the survey questions could actually measure whether people are leaving the field, I focused instead on their frustrations. I wanted to know whether more or less people had frustrations, and how that number correlated with other aspects of their data visualization jobs: if they were hired to do data visualization, were they more likely to have frustrations? What about if they were paid more or less than their UI and design counterparts, or if they worked collaboratively or subordinately with their consumer? By looking at the frustrations that come from specific parts of their jobs, I'm hoping to identify the areas that we as a community can work to better.

For the full analysis and conclusions drawn from the data, read here.

How to read the visualization

How to read graph← set out to work in data visualization← did not set out to work in data visualization
How to read graph
q1

median

q3
How to read graph← responded with no frustrations← % of day respondent spends on data visualization← responded with frustrations

1. Were you hired to do data visualization only?

2. What focus is data visualization in your work?

Brush one or both questions to filter

1 - NaN

out of
Catmule Caps by Catherine Madden
visualization made with 💖 for April: datasketch|es
a monthly collaboration between Nadieh Bremer and Shirley Wu