Andrew Forsman is a Depict Data Studio student and self-described “data viz nerd” who has over 10 years of experience helping organizations plan for, execute, and learn from research and evaluations.

They’re here this week sharing time-saving tips on using a voice command and dictation software called Dragon to help with data viz. Thanks for sharing Andrew!

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Hey everyone!  Andrew Forsman here from the Research & Evaluation Division (RED) of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. Our group focuses on translating research into practice in fields like early childhood education, child nutrition, abuse prevention, and HIV education.

With that comes the need to communicate our work to both expert and layperson audiences, and with that comes… a lot of data viz.

Don’t get me wrong, I love doing this kind of work and I readily describe myself as a data viz nerd.

Even as a novice, however, it quickly became apparent that Microsoft Office wasn’t designed with data viz in mind.

 There are so many things we need to access that are buried three or four clicks deep (think the align objects sub-menu) and just so happen to be the kinds of actions that need to be repeated over and over and over again.

And yet, for many readers of this blog (whether due to budgets, clientele, or our type of projects/deliverables) working in Office is our only option. Luckily, a voice command and dictation software called Dragon can help overcome some of Office’s limitations.

When I originally thought of Dragon as a potential solution, it seemed like it would help with writing emails or even transcribing interviews, but that the data viz process would be too complex for it to be very useful.

Oh, was I wrong!

Dragon does have some limitations that need to be worked around to handle data viz work, but once I put in the upfront time to find those workarounds and set them up, it has really increased my productivity.

In today’s blog post, I’m going to walk you through how to set up your Microsoft Office programs and Dragon custom commands to use this program to your advantage.

As a bonus, I’m also going to give you the custom commands file exported from my Dragon profile and my Office Quick Access Toolbar files so the setup process is much faster for you than it was for me!

Purchasing the Right Version of Dragon

First, it’s important to note that not all versions of Dragon are compatible with data viz work. There are currently 5 different categories: home, premium, professional, legal, and medical.

At minimum, you’ll need to purchase the professional version because it’s compatible with Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher, and it gives you the ability to create and use custom commands.

A single license of Dragon Professional Individual version 15 will cost you $500. If you’re upgrading from a previous version of Dragon, it should be about $250.

Technically, Dragon is supposed to work better if you use a Dragon-approved headset for voice recognition, but I’ve actually found that a $40 external mic from Amazon works better than the cheaper of the two Dragon-approved headsets I saw.

How to Create/Edit a Custom Command in Dragon

To create new commands from scratch, go to Tools –> Manage Custom Commands –> New –> Advanced.

Make sure your Command Type is set to “Step-by-Step” and your New Step is set to “Keystrokes”.

Then use the Insert button to add the keyboard combos you want to assign to each verbal command.

Finally, hit the Train button to train the software how to recognize that command with your voice.

The (Strange) Limitations of Custom Commands

If you press Alt in any Office program, a list of Alt + combinations appear for most clickable options, giving you the commands to enter. Because there are so many clickable options, many of those have multiple characters, such as “Alt + AA”.

Should be simple to enter right? Not so much.

Dragon can only recognize one character after your Alt when programing the Keystrokes custom command, making it all but useless for data viz, as all the relevant functions you’ll need have multiple characters after Alt.

Dragon also has a Record Macro option in the command type. That should be the easiest and most flexible option because it records your clicks and keystrokes as you do them and repeats those actions exactly. You can even watch your mouse cursor move just as you did when recording it.

This seemed like a great option because no matter how long you take to record a macro in Excel, the macro finishes the whole process almost instantly once activated.

For whatever reason though, when you create a Dragon command based on a macro, it executes incredibly slowly. In my testing, I recorded a macro that took less than a second to perform, yet I watched my mouse take roughly 5 seconds to follow the same path. Ideally, it would just execute it near-instantly, like macros in Excel.

It seemed like I was at a dead end.

The Alt + function through Keystrokes wasn’t flexible enough and the Record Macro function was too slow to be practical.

But after a little more research, I found a workaround.

The Workaround

Every Office program has an area that’s called the Quick Access Toolbar. It may not be enabled by default, but you can turn it on and set a variety of shortcuts for you to easily get to.

In our case, the big advantage of using the Quick Access Toolbar is that the first nine icons are always coded as Alt + 1 to Alt + 9, no matter what you set to appear in the toolbar.

Jackpot!

(Sort of…but more on that later)

Rather than take forever to set your Quick Access Toolbar icons to be the exact same items in the exact same order across Publisher, Excel, Word, and PowerPoint, I’m going to give you the shortcut.

All you have to do is click the drop-down menu on the Import/Export button and import the matching Quick Access Toolbar files I’ve created for each of these programs (download at the bottom of the page).

This will replace your current Quick Access Toolbar setup with the one that I use and that matches my custom Dragon commands (download also below).

Other than save yourself time, there’s an important reason why you want to replace your current Quick Access Toolbar setup with the one that I use.

Most Office programs have multiple options you can place in your toolbar for essentially the same command (like Align Objects as a single option or Align Objects as a drop-down menu), BUT not all Office programs have all the same options for shortcuts.

For example, some only have Align Object as a drop-down instead of both the single object and drop-down menu symbols.

Importing my setup will make sure you have the shortcuts that are compatible across all four programs.

Uploading my Dragon Commands & Retraining for Your Voice

Now that you have my Quick Access Toolbar setup files uploaded for PowerPoint, Publisher, Excel, and Word, I’ve got another shortcut for you—my Dragon custom commands backup file.

All you need to do is import this file and retrain the individual commands for your voice and you’ll be ready to go!

From the Dragon Bar, hit Tools –> Command Browser –> MyCommands –> Import and select the import file.

Once those are uploaded go to Tools –> Manage Custom Commands –> Click a command –> Edit –> Train –> Train (again) to replace my voice with yours.

Why My Custom Commands Say Things Like “Level Left” Instead of “Align Left”

There are a set of viz-related commands that are natively programmed into Dragon but only work in PowerPoint; this includes the Align Object commands.

When Dragon hears you start a custom command that sounds like one it has natively, it gets confused and won’t execute either command.

That’s why I’ve set many of my commands to be slightly different verbally than how they actually read, such as “level left” instead of “align left”.

Final Thoughts

I’m sure many of you almost closed this browser window as soon as you read the price of a Dragon license. For most of us, $500 is no joke, and for others, it’s completely out of the question. I’m fortunate to work for an organization large enough to afford occasional purchases like this when there’s a clear efficiency or effectiveness advantage.

There are some things that Dragon can’t help with very well, like customizing individual charts in Excel (those menus go way too deep). For nearly everything else, however, it allows me to do data viz work at 2x – 4x the speed, with only a fraction of the keystrokes and clicks.

As the years go on, data viz is becoming more and more in-demand and both the volume and complexity of our work are increasing. While $500 seems like a lot up-front, you could easily make it up based on the efficiency gains alone, especially now that you have my shortcut files to make setup really simple.

Even if your organization isn’t convinced, there’s another good reason you should try to find a way to pay for it yourself: Human hands aren’t built to sustain the extraordinary volume of keystrokes and clicks we subject them to year after year. Ask practically any health care worker you know, and they’ll say the same.

Consider this a down payment in preventing (or at least delaying) injuries like carpal tunnel, which affects many knowledge workers, and in severe cases, could hamper both your career and quality of life down the line.

Download Files

As a bonus, I’m giving you the custom commands file exported from my Dragon profile and my Office Quick Access Toolbar files so the setup process is much faster for you than it was for me!

Connect with Andrew

LinkedIn: @aforsman3

Depict Data Studio full courses always end with a graduation ceremony where participants share the progress they’ve made in the course. I’m always amazed by the transformations that take place and I can’t help but want to share their wonderful work!

In this blog post, you’ll learn from Elizabeth Dove. Elizabeth is a professor at the University of Montana who teaches art and design. She also co-directs the Innovation Factory (IF). Thanks for sharing, Elizabeth! –Ann

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I teach art and design at the University of Montana, and completed Ann’s Powerful Presentations course during Spring 2021.

I registered for the course because although I have advanced graphic design skills, I still thought I could make more effective presentations by working through the course’s sequential lessons of message, design and delivery.

The course was great, and I’d like to share some of what I learned! So here is one trick, one tip, and one thing to try.

Presentations Trick: Adding Perfect Shapes

Sooner rather than later you’ll need to insert a shape into your slide, and often you’ll want that shape to be a perfect circle or square.

You might have figured out how to enter height and width dimensions to get a perfect square for instance in PowerPoint:

• Insert
• Shape
• Draw a squareish shape
• Shape Format
• Enter 2.00” for height and 2.00” for width to make a perfect 2” square

But a faster way is to:

• Hold down the SHIFT key as you drag out a shape, and it makes it symmetrical in height and width, so you’ll get a perfect circle, square, or triangle, or star every time.

Hold down the shift key whenever you resize as it will keep whatever proportions intact for every shape, just identically scaling it larger or smaller.

I first learned this trick using Adobe software and was pleased it works in the Office suite too, so try it in whatever design software you use frequently if you haven’t already!

Presentations Tip: Monochromatic Tints of Brand Colors

In the Powerful Presentations course, we learned how to set-up brand colors, brand fonts, and save them as a custom theme.

This is a time-saver and adds a sense of visual cohesion to any presentation.

Using PowerPoint, I further figured out an easy approach to making title slides where you can quickly switch between colors to tint a photograph, illustration or graphic to match your branded palette. It’s a snap.

I started with this design, a grid of 12 circles, each with a different image. My design uses four colors from the brand palette of my university, which are I already setup in PowerPoint as custom colors.

I am developing a new course called “Data Arts,” which introduces basic data visualization techniques as well as the work of contemporary data artists. While I like this design for the course’s promotional material, I found it’s a little too busy and colorful to use as a background for my presentation’s title slides.

But check out this easy alternative:

Double Click or Right Click>Format Picture to bring up the Format Picture menu.

Select the Landscape Picture icon>Picture Color>Presets.

Pick from options using your brand colors. I prefer the bottom row of options, which adds a monochromatic tint of color over the image while maintaining contrast and brightness.

With one click, change to try another color.

Save and close your file as normal.

Good news – when you return to work on it days later all these choices remain, including just reverting back to your original. This is referred to as “non-destructive” editing in the digital imaging world, and it is such a great feature for experimentation and creativity, because you risk nothing!

Creating Cohesive Title Slides

I quickly created a title slide for use on all my course presentations with the same image as a background, as I think this communicates cohesion and familiarity to my students.

But each time we switch to a new section of the course, the title slides also switch to a new brand color that corresponds to that section, as follows:

This color tinting technique can be applied to apply to many image types, including screenshots and photographs, giving you a quick win for design cohesion and unity.

For additional control over the intensity of the image, try adjusting Picture Transparency in the same PowerPoint Picture Format menu.

Thing to Try

Early in the Powerful Presentations course we had a lesson on Creating a Visual Framework.

In short, the visual framework is a design element – like an icon – that is symbolic of the organizational approach taken within the presentation.

For example, a simple Venn diagram with two parts could be your visual framework, and it would be communicating that two things are being discussed as well as their critical overlapping region.

Using this icon early in your presentation and returning to it throughout the talk or the project helps your audience know where they are in the process, and lets them absorb a lot of information without feeling overwhelmed.

It helps you – the presenter – organize and clarify your thoughts since they fit this visual model.

Simple enough, right?

Well….. kind of.

It’s simple and apparent once you pick your visual framework. But that selection is critical, and I don’t think it’s easy, but I still recommend wrestling with this task.

It is important because it’s making us think visually, so that we can then effectively communicate visually. We have to tap into the most creative part of our brains and pick a visual metaphor.

This metaphor, or framework, is an iconic shape or diagram that will resonate with your audience: maybe a pyramid, a cycle, or a ladder.

Although it is a simple shape it operates symbolically to represent the strategy and approach you are taking with the presentation as a whole. It is making the abstract concrete, its art and its design, and that is tough!

Ann coached us to dive into this territory, while acknowledging its tough. We thought broadly about our topic and what we wanted to communicate and achieve in our presentation. Are we discussing a project that is likely to cycle through sequential steps, looping to renew and begin again? Then maybe something like this circular diagram.

Are you working on a project where disparate entities are operating in tandem, but directly not partnering or collaborating while working towards a shared goal? Then maybe something like these parallel arrows each making progress left to right.

Does your presentation start with a shared premise and set of conditions, but is expected to branch out in unexpected or experimental ways, somewhat unevenly? Then maybe this is network icon could be the visual framework.

Does your project start with a set of broad foundational skills, that act as a layer to support successive steps, which each get more important and also more refined as you go? Then maybe a pyramid is the right visual metaphor.

Hopefully you get the idea!

Simple iconic shapes like interlocking puzzle pieces, nested concentric circles, segmented donut shapes or hive-like hexagonal structures are all possible solutions – but each of these visual metaphors communicates a very different approach, strategy or experience to a viewer.

To get started, check out the free resources and download designs to get preliminary ideas from: https://diagrammer.duarte.com/.

How to Use a Visual Framework

Once you do the hard work to pick your visual framework, how do you use it?

Ann suggested four main opportunities, as follows:

1. Providing an Overview in the Slidedeck
2. Introducing Sections in the Slidedeck
3. Reinforcing Sections in the Slidedeck (helps the audience oriented to where they are in the presentation)
4. Consistency Across the Slidedoc (for branding and polish)

I applied my visual framework in each of those four categories, and appreciated the icon’s value in helping me organize and improve the visual cohesion of my presentations.

But I see the significance of designing a visual framework as so much more. The effort to pick the right visual metaphor transformed the way I understood my own content and how I should be teaching it.

By thinking through the symbolism of hierarchies, nested shapes, steps or cycles I found myself inspecting the content of my course in important, deep, and insightful ways.

By asking myself to design a visual analogy – this simple icon/diagram – I had to address the themes and intentions of my projects and my approach to communication early in my process.

Vital work! Try it!

Connect with Elizabeth

LinkedIn: @elizabeth-dove-406

Website: www.elizabethdove.com