Although I am not a designer, I have learned much about design over the last several years. Over the past year I’ve compiled this list of items for non-designers or people who work with designers. Its intent is to give those of us that work increasingly with dashboard or information designers greater fluency in our conversations with designers.
Creating this list took on a new urgency for me after reading this article on IBM’s design strategy. I knew there would be more folks like me needing some ideas on how to understand, communicate and lead designers.
While there are many great sources of design, web design, information design and data storytelling, the following items are what spoke to me in the simplest terms possible. I divided them into sections and recommend reading or doing the sections in sequence as they build on each other. The Tufte course, in the major section, requires a day’s time and costs money, but is well worth it.
If you get beyond this list check out these other sites Storytelling with Data, Visualising Data or Flowing Data to see some of what you learned being practiced or peruse Juice's design principles under Learning and Resources to build on what you've learned. None of this will make you a designer, but your conversations with designers will be so much more fruitful. Enjoy.