THE BEST ONE-DAY COURSE YOUR COMPANY CAN SEND YOU TO

John Dove, Paloma & Associates, May 19, 2015

John Dove writes:

"Every year for the past 20 years or so at about this time I receive in the mail a flyer advertising Edward Tufte's one-day course on 'Presenting Data and Information.' It is the best value-for-money that you can spend if you are involved in any way in presentation of information to users. When I receive this new schedule of these courses each year I get to thinking whom do I know whose career might change for the better if they take this course.

I've taken it twice (the content is always up to date with the latest examples of both good and bad information design). Every attendee gets copies of Tufte's four major works on visual display of information. [They are all included in the annotated bibliography on User-Centered Design I posted a link to in my previous LinkedIn post.] Tufte offers a group discount so your company can send a whole department or product team. And there's a steep discount for full-time students and faculty members.

In the early days of Credo Reference, when we were still not yet cash-flow-positive and had to watch every penny, I insisted on offering to every member of the xrefer (our name then) staff who had either development or product marketing roles in the company, whether in London or Boston, a chance to go to this course. We aspired to be leaders in creating innovative ways for users to browse information from subject encyclopedias. To me it was money well spent and showed that we were a company that takes effective user-centered design seriously.

If your boss says there's no money to send you to such a course go to it on your own nickel, but buy a copy of 'The Inmates are Running the Asylum' for your boss or boss's boss.

All these one-day course fill up quickly."

-- Staff