Get Data Visualization & Storytelling To Work For You
“The human brain registers visual information 60,000 times faster than any other form of communication.”
Thanks, Michael and Allen. That being said, there are a few rules we need to follow when it comes to visualizations to support storytelling. We will share a few examples with you here.
Which graph below, outlining department spending is easier for you to read?
Clearly the second one, the bar graph. Why? Because it organizes budgets largest to smallest so you can easily see how they stack up against on another.
Below, we have visuals for Annual Revenue By region by year. While both of these visuals, in my opinion, are acceptable, I would far rather be shown the data in the bar graph, organized by largest to smallest revenues.
And while I personally wasn’t a fan of this visual (below), my team was. And maybe I was being too harsh, it wasn’t overly hard to read, it’s just a little busy.
So this brings us to….
What is data visualization?
It’s the graphical representation of data. Its goal is to make information easy to digest!
Subconscious processing: Also called pre-attentive processing.
“In 1/10th of a second, our brain will combine colors, scale, iconography to form conclusions that can inform and bias our mind before we even realize it!”
Consciously: Also called attentive processing. Basically, what we consciously focus on.
When creating reports, remember people won’t read everything in order, that’s why the information should provide enough context.
People typically assemble the story subconsciously.
Kaiser Fung’s Junk Charts Trifecta Checkup
What is the practical question?
What does the data say?
What does the visual say?
This checklist helps you think about your data viz from the perspective of your audience and decide if your visual is communicating your data effectively or not.
What do you want to show with your data?
Think about the audience and the objective of the report.
Defining the objective might come in the form of questions - Was the campaign a success? If so what drove that success? Consider including the following charts in your report:
Change over time (sales, clicks, web visitors, etc)
Data that is ranked (best performing audience or ad by click volume, CTR, CPC, ROAS)
Correlation/ causation (sudden drop in sales or web visits might be correlated to external factors like changes in consumer behavior)
4 best practices for data visualization
Avoid cluttering your data.
Make sure your charts are properly labeled.
Highlight important fluctuations in the data.
The devil is in the details - Remember to use relevant fonts, color schemes, and charts in order to make your presentation more engaging.
In general, data viz helps break up complex data so we can express insights in a useful manner!
“The more power you give to the user, the less control you have over the story you want to tell.”
What is data storytelling?
It’s the ability to tell a compelling story with data. The goal is to communicate knowledge and action items in an engaging and clear way.
Successful narratives resolve our anxiety about a topic.
Data means nothing without a story behind it.
There are two approaches to data storytelling
Author-driven approach: It has a linear path through the visualization and relies heavily on messaging. It doesn’t include interactivity.
Reader-driven approach: It has no prescribed ordering of images, no messaging, and a high degree of interactivity. (These are typically dashboards.)
When creating reports, remember people won’t read everything in order, that’s why the information should provide enough context.
People typically assemble the story subconsciously.
“Numbers have an important story to tell. They rely on you to give them a clear and convincing voice.”
Defining the data storytelling concept
Find the story
Analyze data and identify patterns
Look at the data in a visual form to identify things you didn’t notice before
Remember to think in terms of story while you are analyzing the data
What is the logical flow of that story?
What questions are you asking?
Why has ROAS increased or decreased?
Why has CTR dropped compared to the previous week?
What answers are you finding?
Users have been purchasing more low-priced items causing the drop in ROAS.
Click volume decrease this week because of a temporary increase in CPC trends, hence fewer clicks were reported.
“If you torture the data long enough, it will tell you anything.”
Defining your audience to round out your story
Know the audience you will be presenting data to. This will inform the story and level of details required.
Beginner: Has a basic understanding of the subject and does not need further explanation
Generalist: Is knowledgeable on the subject but will want an overall understanding with prime themes
Manager: Has deep and practical knowledge of complexities and correlation with access to data
Executive: Understands only the importance and outcomes of probable situations
Expert: Generates their own conclusions using the data so can do with less data representation and more numbers
5 best practices for data storytelling
Understand your audience’s point of view.
What do they hope to get from the data insights you’ll deliver?
Write down your ideas before you start structuring your story. This will help you remove the less important details. Spotlighting involves scanning the data to quickly identify the most important insights.
It’s the context around the data that provides value and that’s what will make people listen and engage.
Utilize a set of directions to guide the flow of the story.
That’s why sending agendas is so important!
Position the story to improve decision-making.
(...) the end should never be a fixed event, but rather a set of options or questions to trigger an action from the audience. Never forget that the goal of data storytelling is to encourage and energize critical thinking for business decisions.
The 6 Ws are the best way to organize a story - Define which are the 3 most important ones for your story
What / Why / Where / Who / How / When
What happened to the KPIs this period?
Why did it happen? | When did it happen?
How are we going to move forward?
in closing….
Scrutinize your visuals with your team, your partner, your friend…or your mom. See if they understand them. And ask these questions
Are you prioritizing the right data to tell your story?
We have many B2B clients that we track “sales” for, however, our main KPI is MQL and SQL. So are we overemphasizing sales in our datasets?
Are we selling our wins?
Are we sharing too many scorecards KPIs and therefore losing the main value of the program we are running for clients in the weeds of metric overload?
Is the visual right?
When comparing to benchmark, we should use bars.
When identifying media mix or percentage of the business, we can use a pie chart…very rarely other than this instance can we use a pie!