Through case studies and visuals, Julie Rodriguez and Piotr Kaczmarek, co-author of Visualizing Financial Data, demonstrate methods to communicate financial information in a visual context. The set of case studies provide a fresh take on data visualizations that contrast traditional uses of charts with new methods that provide more effective representations of the data to produce greater insights. Topics include:

• How to communicate time-lapsed data to better understand the context of an event (e.g., how to incorporate details into the standard bar chart that provides perspective and creates awareness)
• How to display multiple variables to analyze and compare attributes (e.g., how to compare the characteristics of a collection of entities to determine behavior, trends, and outliers)
• How to show associations and links between datasets to understand the impact one value has on another (i.e., setting up these displays for better comparison and making them concise)

Rodriguez is Creative Director at Sapient Global Markets. She was previously employed at MathWorks and Fidelity Investments. She received her bachelor’s degree in industrial design from Carnegie Mellon University and her master’s degree in digital media from Harvard Extension School. She has patented her work in commodities trading and data visualizations for MATLAB and publishes industry articles on user experience and data analysis and visualization.

Piotr is an Associate Creative Director based in Sapient’s Boston office. He joined Sapient Global Markets in 2012 after more than 20 years career in designing of visual systems with a purpose of making abstract concepts and data accessible to users. Piotr has an extensive experience in the field of information architecture. He is experienced in many forms of interactive data visualizations, from elaborate analytical tools to simple but effective ways of delivering dashboard-level summaries. Piotr studied architecture at Warsaw university of Technology and holds a master's degree in industrial design from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland.