Making figures

to communicate the main messages of a scientific paper

Goal

identify the do’s and don'ts of visuals for communicating scientific messages
target visual designs for a particular message and audience

Making Figures

Worksheet

This workshop’s activities take about 30 to 50 minutes to complete

Warm-up activity: share successes, hopes, concerns (1 to 2 minutes)
Activity: show me your evidence (5 to 10 minutes)
Information: visual communication - tell your messages through figures (5 minutes)
Activity: what makes a clear figure (20 to 30 minutes)
Reflection: main takeaways (2 to 3 minutes)
Resources

Instructions

Inspirational Skeletor "Remember how far you've come, not just how far you have to go. You are not where you want to be, but neither are you where you used to be.

1. share

Warm-up Activity

share successes, hopes, and concerns

direction sign in Japanese and English showing arrows pointing in three different diections, and three labels "upgrade of car", "upgrade of person", "down the hill"

2. show me your evidence

Activity

check that your messages are supported by your evidence

scientific figure showing three mammals to scale: a Modern Beaver, "Justin Bieber", and a extinct"Giant Beaver"

3. visual communication - tell your messages through figures

Information

simple guidelines (plus examples visuals) to improve visual communication

xkcd cartoon entitled 'curve-fitting methods and the messages they send" showing six panels o fthe same data as a scatter plot and each panel show a different curve fit (link to original post in caption)

3. what makes a good figure

Activity

discover what makes or breaks visual communication by comparing a series of charts that are all based on the same data set (image: xkcd)

xkcd cartoon entitled 'curve-fitting methods and the messages they send" showing six panels o fthe same data as a scatter plot and each panel show a different curve fit (link to original post in caption)

5. reflection

Activity

what from this workshop can you use or implement right away? (image: xkcd)

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