Storytelling with Data

The importance of context

• Exploratory vs explanatory graphics.
  • Exploratory is for the analyst.
  • Exploratory is for the audience.
• Who is the audience, who is the stakeholder?
• What do you need your audience to know or do?
• How will you communicate to your audience? Live or written by email?
• What tone do you want your communication to set?
• What data is available that will help make your point?
• If you had 3 minutes to tell a story, what would be the big idea : the unique point of view in one sentence?
• Let’s now move to storyboarding.

Choosing an effective visual

• Go with a simple text or a figure.
• Available charts: scatterplot, table, lines, slopegraph, vertical bars, horizontal bars, stacked vertical bars, stacked horizontal bars, waterfall, square areas.
• Table? Never in a live presentation (too dense).
• Heatmap? Never! A better alternative is a slopegraph.
• Color saturation is for visual contrast: put everything in B&W except the one thing you want to draw attention on.
• Speak in relative, not in absolute: scatterplot, average, percentage, waterfall (change, increment), areas for comparing categories.
• Avoid clutter and 3D, avoid saturated series and secondary axes.
• Prefer a zero baseline and equal scales among several graphics.
• Prefer square forms over round forms.
  • Avoid pie charts or donut charts.
  • Prefer a horizontal bar chart.

Clutter is your enemy !

• Avoid cognitive load: a simple chart, a few line, one image.
• Avoid borders (limited to the L axes), avoid gridlines and background shading.
• The y-axis is often facultative.
• Clean up axis labels; summarize labels (Jan vs January)
• Bold and colors is for making the important stand out.
• Limit to 2 or 3 colors.
• Add white space.
• Add details to the important areas (annotate).
• Add the legend on the graph, not outside.

Focus your audience’s attention

• Use preattentive attributes in text : bold, italics, separate spatially, underlined, more tone or color (B&W), data stand out, numbered data, size.
• Avoid shades of red and green.
• Use preattentive attributes in visual : difference in orientation, shape, length, width, size, curvature, added marks, enclosure, hue, intensity, spatial position, motion
• Position on the page follows the 1-2-3-4 loop.
• Consult:
  • Cultural Color Connotations, David McCandless.
  • The Visual Miscellaneum : A Colourful Guide to the World’s Most Consequential Trivia.

Think like a designer

• Eliminate distractions.
• Not all data are equally important.
• When detail is not needed, summarize.
• Would eliminating ‘this’ change anything?
• Push necessary, but non-message-impacting items to the background.
• The power of subcategories, subdivisions.
• Legible, clean, straightforward language.
• Action titles.

Lessons in storytelling

• Write a story with a schema (in 3 acts).
• Write a narrative structure (the hero’s journey).
• Use the power of repetition: 3, 7, 12, 30, 40, 100, 500, 1000.

Final thoughts

• Learn your tools well.
  • Google Spreadsheet, Tableau, R, D3 (JavaScript), Processing, Python, etc.
• Iterate.
• Devote time to storytelling with data.
• Seek inspiration throught good examples.
• Find your style.
• Consult websites.
  • Eagereyes, Robert Kosara.
  • FiveThirdyEight’s Data Lab.
  • Flowing Data, Nathan Yau.
  • The Functional Art, Alberto Cairo.
  • The Gardian Data Blog.
  • HelpMeViz, Jon Schwabish.
  • Junk Carts, Kaiser Fung.
  • Make a Powerful Point, Gavin McMahon.
  • Perceptual Edge, Stephen Few.
  • Visualising Data, Andy Kirk.
  • VizWiz, Andy Kriebel.
  • Storytelling with data, Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic.
  • and many more.

Wrap up

1. Understand the context.
2. Choose an appropriate visual display.
3. Eliminate clutter.
4. Focus attention where you want it.
5. Think like a designer.
6. Tell a story.