SlideLegend

Lab

The Lab: Chart and Slide Games That Train the Eye

Reading about chart choice and slide design only goes so far; the judgement comes from making calls and seeing the result. Each game in the Lab isolates one habit, takes a few minutes, and explains every answer. Keep or toss drills matching a chart to a question. Fix the slide trains the reviewer's eye on real faults. Legend match shows why labels belong on the lines. The squint test checks what an audience sees in the first second, and works on your own slides too. Everything runs in the browser, nothing is uploaded, and no account is needed.

Slide sorter

4 slides
  1. 01 Keep or toss Chart choice Match the chart to the question. Twelve cards, swipe or use the arrow keys.
  2. 02 Fix the slide Slide review Find five faults on each of three slides, then compare with the fixed version.
  3. 03 Legend match Labelling Name four unlabelled lines from clues and see why direct labels read faster.
  4. 04 Squint test Visual hierarchy Blur three designs of one slide, then blur your own, to check what the eye sees first.

Twelve chart-and-question pairings, three slides with five hidden faults each, four unlabelled lines and a list of clues, three versions of one slide behind a blur slider. Four games, each isolating one specific judgment call rather than covering chart and slide design broadly.

Four games, four specific habits

Keep or Toss trains chart choice: a question appears next to a chart, and the call is whether that chart actually answers it, with a short explanation after every decision covering what the pairing got right or wrong. Fix the Slide trains the reviewer’s eye, five faults hidden on each of three real-looking slides, a topic-phrase title, a distorting 3D pie, bars that don’t start at zero, and a side-by-side comparison against a fixed version once all five are found. Legend Match trains labelling, asking four unlabelled lines to be matched to their names using written clues about how each one behaved, before revealing the same chart with names written directly on the lines. The Squint Test trains visual hierarchy, blurring three designs of one slide to show which element still holds attention once the words are gone, and then doing the same to a slide loaded from the reader’s own device, processed only in the browser.

How the games connect back to the Academy lessons

Each game runs the same reasoning a related Academy lesson covers in writing, as a faster, scored version rather than a substitute for it. Keep or Toss mirrors the logic in Which Chart Should I Use? and the Chart Chooser tool: name the relationship in the data, then count what’s available, before picking a type. Fix the Slide draws its five faults directly from the checks in the Slide Design Checklist and the chart-honesty traps covered in Spot a Misleading Graph. The Squint Test is the hands-on version of the hierarchy argument behind Assertion-Evidence Slides, where one headline and one piece of evidence are meant to survive first glance over everything else on the slide.

Nothing to install, nothing saved beyond the browser

None of the four games ask for an account, a download or an email address, and none require finishing a lesson first, since each one explains its own rule before the first round starts. A game is a faster way to test whether a piece of reasoning actually holds up under a quick, scored call; a lesson is where the fuller version of that same reasoning, with more examples and more edge cases, gets written out in full. Getting several calls wrong in a row on any of the four is usually the clearest sign of which lesson is worth opening next, more so than picking one off a list in advance.

Questions

What does each Lab game actually train?

Keep or toss trains matching a chart type to the question it needs to answer, using twelve cards with instant feedback. Fix the slide trains a reviewer's eye for the five faults that turn up most often in real decks, from cut axes to 3D pies. Legend match trains labelling, showing why lines named directly read faster than a legend box. The squint test trains visual hierarchy, checking what an audience's eye lands on first.

How does 'keep or toss' connect to the Academy lessons?

It runs the same logic taught in Which Chart Should I Use? and the Chart Chooser tool: name the relationship in the data first, comparison, trend, distribution, ranking, then count what's available, but as a fast card game with immediate right-or-wrong feedback instead of a walkthrough. Playing it after those two lessons is a way to check whether the reasoning actually stuck.

Can the squint test be used on a real slide, not just the built-in examples?

Yes. After trying the three built-in slide designs, a slide exported as an image can be loaded and blurred the same way, processed entirely in the browser and never uploaded anywhere. It's the direct, practical version of the same hierarchy check the Slide Design Checklist and Assertion-Evidence Slides lessons describe in writing.

Do the Lab games require reading the related Academy lesson first?

No. Each game explains its own rule up front and gives a reason after every choice, so it works as a standalone few minutes. The connection to a specific lesson matters more for someone who wants the fuller reasoning behind a game's answers, or who got several calls wrong and wants the structured version of the same idea.

Why does 'legend match' remove the legend entirely instead of just explaining the problem?

Because the friction of a legend is easiest to feel, not read about: matching four unlabelled lines to their names from written clues recreates the exact back-and-forth a legend forces on a reader, glancing at a colour, then a legend box, then back to the line. Seeing the same chart relabelled with names written directly on the lines afterward makes the speed difference obvious in a way a description of the problem alone doesn't.