The Standard · Finance and Analysis
Data Visualisation
Builds charts with AI that show the data faithfully, labelled and sourced.
You turn financial, operational or research data into charts, dashboards and visual stories for a specific audience. An AI assistant may suggest chart forms and layouts, but can distort scales, misread trends, or invent labels.
The exam for Data Visualisation is not open yet. A skill opens once its questions are approved and tested.
What it measures
Whatever the skill, the exam rates your work in the same six areas of the Standard. Three are for the value you get from the assistant, and three for the control you keep. Each area gets one of 4 ratings (Emerging, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished). For Data Visualisation, a strong performance looks like this. What each area includes and excludes.
Value
What you get from the assistant: how far it takes the work, how well you brief it, and the piece you hand in.
- Reaching further
You use the reply to reveal key findings, comparisons, gaps and audience questions your chart would otherwise miss.
Using the assistant to produce work beyond what you could have produced alone, rather than the same work faster.
- Briefing the assistant
You brief the assistant with audience, decision, source data, chart purpose, format, length, labels and annotations.
Giving the assistant the reader, purpose and source facts the work depends on, and the form, length and contents you need back.
- The finished piece
You turn the reply into an accurate, accessible chart with readable labels, annotations, source notes and your judgement.
Turning the assistant's output into something a colleague could use: editing it, combining it and adding original thinking.
Control
What you keep in hand: checking its work, keeping information safe, and deciding what stays with a person.
- Checking its work
You check every plotted value, scale, label, source and interpretation against supplied data before sharing the visualisation.
Checking the assistant's claims, figures and assumptions against the source before the work is used.
- Safety and confidentiality
You keep restricted and personal information out of the brief and output, and decline unsafe visualisation requests.
Handling confidential and personal data, seeing compliance, ethical and reputational risk, and declining unsafe requests.
- Knowing what to delegate
You decide which chart-production steps AI receives, retain sensitive interpretations, and name who approves unresolved publication decisions.
Deciding what to hand to the assistant and what to keep, and at what stakes, before any output exists.
What you do in the exam
Every skill of the Standard is examined the same way, at the same pass mark, in the Applied AI Badge. Two tasks with the assistant and two sets of questions, over 15 minutes. You do real work with an AI assistant beside you, hand in what you would send, then answer follow-up questions about your own work.
- 01
A labelled chart from supplied data, showing one finding for a defined audience.
- 02
A dashboard specification from stakeholder requirements, with panels, measures, filters and accessibility needs.
- 03
A revised chart from an existing visual, correcting misleading scales, labels and clutter.
These are the kinds of task the exam sets. Your exam draws its own from a bank the Examination Board has approved.
- Exam
- Applied AI Badge
- Price
- US$19
- Length
- 15 minutes
- Attempts
- One for each purchase, then a 7-day wait
What the badge certifies
What an employer reads
Passed an Institute exam in data visualisation. They briefed the assistant with data and audience needs, caught a misleading scale, and delivered a labelled chart.
You earn it in one exam, never by finishing a course.
- Name on the certificate
- Applied AI Badge: Data Visualisation
- Who it is for
- Data analysts, finance professionals, researchers and policy analysts who present evidence through charts.
- Valid for
- 2 years, then renew
- Verification
- Every badge has a public verification page an employer can open, and a place in the public register if you choose it.
- Marked by
- An AI examiner marks your work against a marking guide and quotes your own words as evidence. A person checks anything borderline.
Near it in the Standard
- Data Analysis
Analyses data with AI and verifies every result before it drives a decision.
Practice only
- Survey Design & Analysis
Designs surveys and interprets responses with AI, checking bias and sample before reporting.
- Budget Management
Manages a budget with AI-assisted analysis and checks the arithmetic and the assumptions.
- Financial Literacy
Reads financial statements and terms with AI's help and knows when the explanation is wrong.
- Spreadsheets & No-Code Data
Builds spreadsheets and no-code data flows with AI and tests them before trusting them.
Practice only
- Financial Analysis
Runs financial analysis with AI and reconciles every number to its source.
- Data Storytelling
Turns numbers into a narrative with AI that stays true to what the data shows.
Everything in Finance and Analysis, including the level exams that name the whole function.
Practise it before you pay for it
Practice is free (up to 50 sessions a day) and shaped like the exam, with a coach that tells you what to change. It never counts towards a credential, and an exercise you practised is kept out of your exam.
Want to learn it first? AI+ Data Visualisation covers this skill. No book is required to pass.