This month, we presented Introduction to Infographics at the American Evaluation Association’s 2017 Summer Institute in Atlanta, Georgia. As one of 35 professional development workshops geared toward evaluation professionals, this workshop focused on how to use infographics to communicate evaluation findings in an effective and engaging way. In our experience, lengthy written reports often go unread and unused. As an alternative, infographics can be a powerful visual tool to communicate evaluation findings in an easily accessible way. This workshop was an opportunity to share what we’ve learned about infographics along the way with other evaluators who are interested in using infographics to disseminate information.
As part of our workshop, participants were introduced to our Checklist for Reviewing Infographics as a tool for guiding the infographic design and review process. We demonstrated practical, easy-to-use resources and tools for creating an infographic, including an overview of software and websites, icon collections, and stock photo websites. Finally, our workshop participants went through our 10 Steps to Creating an Infographic and took a stab at creating their own infographic. We were impressed by our participants’ willingness to dive into the process, and many were on track to developing inspiring and creative infographics.
Based on the feedback we received, we know our workshop participants learned a lot, and so did we! Specifically, we are now working to integrate more resources for ensuring that infographics are accessible to those with visual disabilities. We also plan to translate our resources into Spanish in order to reach a wider audience. We hope that workshop participants will join our Magnolia Infographics LinkedIn community as a way to continue to share questions, ideas, and examples of infographics.
We are thrilled that we were able to share our knowledge with other evaluators, and we look forward to future collaboration about how infographics can be used in evaluation. Check out some photos of the Summer Institute workshop in action, and feel free to visit our Tools and Resources page for more information on the various tools mentioned here.
