About this desk

I am Bryan Calabro. I build a small portfolio of single-purpose tools, and one desk per discipline documents how each part of that work is done. This is the data desk.

The standing rule

A chart with no decision attached does not go up. If the number did not change what anyone did, it is not a finding, it is a fact about a database.

How it is written

• First person.
• Method shown. The query, the definition and the source sit next to the number, not in an appendix.
• Confounds left in, in the body rather than a footnote, including the ones that do not overturn the conclusion.
• Every entry dated. A number with no date is a claim about the present that quietly becomes a claim about the past.

The three checks that come before any chart are written up on how I read a number.

Why two pages are empty

Because there are no sourced numbers to put on them. Thirteen of the twenty-three lines in the fact ledger are open, and one of them is every figure for this product.

I could write both pieces convincingly. A desk whose entire claim is that the method is visible cannot afford one fabricated chart, because it makes every real one worth less.

What runs it

Worth being precise about, on a data desk: that analytics is on the calabrodesign site and nowhere else. The tools themselves have no backend and no analytics at all. Nothing you type into sift, or into any of the others, is sent anywhere, which is also why there is no usage data on this desk to report.

The design of this desk

Outside the ten-family system the apps use, with its own palette and type pair: white and deep green, Inter Tight over Inter, with mono for anything that is a number. Both themes are held to 4.5:1 by the same contrast check every app runs.