I'm a big nerd on the sly. So when Rachel and Myuran said they wanted to teach me some techniques for analysing and visualising data it was a big yes from me.
With Rachel Kelly and Myuran Kuhachandran
Rachel is the Supporter Insight Lead at Parkinson's UK where for just over 3 years she's been building our data analytics and insight work. The data is used to 'tell stories to drive decisions that underpin actions that make change happen'. Myuran works alongside her as a Fundraising Insight Analyst and has been with the charity for 18 months.
Using this project as an example we started to look at ways that data can be collected, the types of data and how we could play it back to an audience. Not only was this a great way of helping me to understand it it made me realise the opportunity I have to ACTUALLY put some of this into practice with this project. As it's early days it's not too late to start capturing data as I go along and make it part of the documenting process.
'Learning new things is key for me both at work and at play! Data keeps moving forward and the questions we try to answer are always changing. To keep finding those answers we dance with new ideas all the time and are always learning new approaches, techniques, and tools along the way.' Rachel
We decided that as the project was set up to show that by doing new things you could take control of your own happiness and mental wellbeing, that finding a way to measure this would be great and would provide some strong data at the end to be able to say whether the project had been a success. It would also show the kind of things that provide maximum happiness, for example a skydive might not be fun but afterwards the pride level would be high. Doing flower arranging might be more fun to do but not provide the same smug feeling afterwards. Myuran kindly set me up a spreadsheet with these new variables that I can track.
For all the non-nerds who drifted off for a bit there here's a summary … A spreadsheet happened. You'll see some charts at some point.
'We should always try new things so we don’t get stuck in our comfort zones. It helps open your mind.' Myuran