Im sure you have come across one of these bar chart race videos on Youtube. These videos become popular based on the content they showcase which ranges from character deaths in Marvel films to gross income by beverage manufacturers in the past decade. While the attraction seems novel, evaluators should be interested in the lure of using simple animation to communicate data!

These videos start with a spreadsheet. The best data for a racing bar chart are time series comparisons among a small number of cases. In our example we are tracking the number of minutes Catalyst staff spend in meetings as calculated by tallying the total number of minutes at the end of each year. Your spreadsheet should look something like this:

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Notice we are using random numbers in our example. Next, you will want to head over to https://flourish.studio/. The bar chart race is only one of the many glorious options offered here at no cost, just be aware that all data is public unless you buy in to the pricing plans. Navigate to the bar chart race option, upload your data, and you’re on your way. By the way, column c has an image url which means we are using hosted images. This means that you can't upload your images directly to flourish studio and will have to find something online. In this case I am using images uploaded to our website.

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You can modify almost everything about the visualization andexport to share everywhere. The power play is to use this to get your clientsimmersed in their data. Consider sharing as a preview or during a finalpresentation. Or maybe you have a better idea as to how this could be implemented.

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