{"id":9487,"date":"2021-12-02T10:50:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-02T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dvsnightingstg.wpenginepowered.com\/?p=9487"},"modified":"2021-12-02T10:48:38","modified_gmt":"2021-12-02T15:48:38","slug":"dataviz-horror-stories-jon-schwabish","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nightingaledvs.com\/dataviz-horror-stories-jon-schwabish\/","title":{"rendered":"Dataviz Horror Stories: Jon Schwabish"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jon Schwabish, co-author with Alice Feng of the “Do No Harm”<\/a> guide, tells his children five things:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Be honest<\/li>
  2. Be kind<\/li>
  3. Be respectful<\/li>
  4. Be hard working<\/li>
  5. Be responsible<\/li>
  6. Be safe (okay, six things, he added this one over the past year)<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Not only do those values guide his children through school each day, but they also guide Jon in his collaborations with colleagues and clients. These values help build relationships, improve friendships, and lead to successful partnerships with clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Of course, these values are usually learned through some mistakes, missteps, and even \u201cfailures\u201d (however, as I\u2019ll show, there are no real failures here, only observations). Jon Schwabish is an economist and data visualization specialist at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. I sat down with him to talk about a couple work experiences that went awry and reflect on the subsequent lessons learned for this latest installment in our Horror Stories series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n\n\n\n

    Building while flying<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

    The story<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Jon was working with a client he\u2019d worked with before. The previous project was successful, so he didn\u2019t question the challenge this time. For this engagement, the client wanted his help with a new project that they weren\u2019t quite sure how to build. Jon came onboard in the early stages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The task was to help develop a model of how the client would carry out their research and then pull it together into a final report. Typically, on client engagements, the clients conduct the research and then they work with Jon to carry out the communication. With this project, however, the work was primarily scoping and modeling, so there wasn\u2019t a specific contract with delivery dates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Adding to the complexity was the client\u2019s timeline: they wanted this work to be delivered as soon as possible, aiming for a period of three or four weeks to completion. While this project was a smidge out of his usual comfort zone, he spent the next couple of weeks understanding their objectives, exploring the data, and putting together a few ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    After the third meeting, however, he could tell there was some tension. The client was pushing for more to be delivered faster, and Jon wasn\u2019t able to meet them there. \u201cThey called me the next day to communicate that they were going in a different direction,\u201d Jon recalls. Due to the quick timeline and the nature of the agreement, he wasn\u2019t paid for the conceptual work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cI understood where they were coming from, but yeah, I learned a hard lesson with that one. At some point you sort of realize when you need the people you\u2019re working with or working for to be at a certain starting point [before you begin working with them].\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In general, like many of us, Jon loves trying new things, pushing boundaries, and using client projects to grow and improve his skills, to a point<\/em>. In this case, the scoping work felt a bit out of his wheelhouse, and ultimately led to mismatched expectations, disappointment on the client\u2019s side, and embarrassment on Jon\u2019s end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \u201cIf your job is to make a thing, you\u2019re [often] simultaneously learning how to make that thing,\u201d Jon believes. Each project is an opportunity to both provide valuable work and learn something new while doing it. Ultimately, the work required for this project relied on scoping and data visualization design that were a smidge too far out of his comfort zone for the client\u2019s timeline. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Lessons learned<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Jon\u2019s biggest lesson learned? <\/p>\n\n\n\n