Storytelling is an essential human skill. Stories help us make sense of and put into perspective the increasingly complicated digital world around us. Even though Gartner predicts that by 2025 data stories will be the most widespread way of consuming analytics, using data to tell a story is still an emerging concept.
Valeria’s experience confirms that.
Back in my wide eyed, excel monkey years I was working for the Spanish market. My client trusted me (my team) to make sure their customers were billed on time and then paid, but also, that the whole process with a million manual steps ran smoothly and with constant improvements. We were encouraged to come up with ideas, but somehow my proposals based on real life data, statistics on our problems and actual cost were not getting me anywhere. I needed to get to them, but my shiny barcharts and progress graphs weren’t hitting the spot.
I struggled a lot.
But then I started creating and strengthening relationships, asked a thousand questions, shadowed multiple people’s work and tried my best to find out what really kept my client up at night. I realized lots of data were getting archived, never used, and that the connections were just wrong.
Based on these realizations, I prepared graphs and visualizations, and adjusted the way I exposed my ideas. And I got my first successes!
Just like Valeria in her early years, we often forget that we need to tell stories. So what should we do to bring data insights closer to our customer? What is data storytelling and what makes a good data story? What are the skills we need and where should we start?
Data Storytelling is the ability to tell a story with data and to personalize the data seen based on the audience. To do this, you need to be mindful of the following:
Before you start working on your story, ask yourself the following questions:
Build a clear understanding of who you are communicating with, what you need them to know or do, how you will communicate to them, and what data you have to back up your case. Employ concepts like the 3-minute story, the Big Idea, and storyboarding to articulate your story and plan the desired content and flow.
Valeria’s example:
Who: My audience are the finance directors of a manufacturing company who approved and started a new pricing method on one of the product lines.
What: This new method has been live for six months, and we want to expand it to 10 more product lines.
How: Illustrate the success of the first product line and the way it benefited the organization, how it could benefit us if we scaled it up.
Tips
Consider these two questions:
With a live presentation, you (the presenter) are in full control. You determine what the audience sees and when they see it. You can respond to visual cues to speed up, slow down, or go into a particular point in more or less detail. Not all of the detail needs to be directly in the communication (the presentation or slide deck), because you, the subject matter expert, are there to answer any questions that arise over the course of the presentation.
In writing, you have less control, because the audience controls the way they consume the information.
Types of visuals
You can typically meet your needs using one of the visuals below. Be sure that the chart illustrates the relationship you want to convey.
Important! Do not use:
Tips
Valeria’s example:
Think about hotel rooms, we feel comfortable when we are surrounded by few things, plain and usually white colors. Makes our brains go ‘this is clean, you can relax’. We associate simple with elegance, luxury. When you declutter your visuals, you make your audience feel like they’re entering the top floor suite.
Leverage the Gestalt principles to understand how people see and identify candidates for elimination. Use contrast strategically. Employ alignment of elements and maintain white space to help make the interpretation of your visuals a comfortable experience for your audience.
Employ the power of preattentive attributes like color, size, and position to signal what’s important. Use these strategic attributes to draw attention to where you want your audience to look, and guide your audience through your visual. Evaluate the effectiveness of preattentive attributes in your visual by applying the “where are your eyes drawn?” test. Very powerful when used sparingly and strategically.
Tips
Stories work like Magic:
Think of a bonfire party. Make your story so good that the audience will focus on that and not on the dude playing guitar, the stars or the hypnotizing fire.
When we tell a story we are taking on responsibility, because the audience is agreeing to go on a journey with us and we need to make it worth their while.
The story is for them, so make sure you are understood.
Constructing a story
Craft a story with clear beginning (plot), middle (twists and climax/’ah moment’), and resolution/end (call to action). Consider the order and manner of your narrative. Use the power of repetition to help your stories stick.
Once I realized I was onto something with these new skills, I stuffed up my CV with my VBA, and my SAP and my UiPath and somehow got an interview for a job with none of those skills, as a Junior Data Analyst.
I’d like to say that I told my story and charmed my way into getting the job, but it was in fact the other way around, the Lead of Data Analytics got me instead. He didn’t ask me what I wanted to be in five years or about Excel functions. He showed me practical examples and he told me about their journey: how his current team of three started as just him delivering numbers here and there, reporting… and how they had a vision of bringing all the data of a big company into one place and actually using it, helping their colleagues make better decisions. And it wasn’t only a vision, there was all this data and all these facts along the way. I was sold.
The ability to tell engaging data stories is one of the most powerful tools you can use to help you land a good job, get amazing clients and charm your next talented hire.
To practice storytelling, start with your own story. It’s a fun way to practice and who can be more of an expert on your life than you? You have the data, test it on your friends in a relaxed environment. As for the context: Ask yourself WHAT, WHO, HOW? Choose the right Visual (remember, no clutter) and bring the attention where it needs to be. Make your audience comfortable and make your story easy to follow. Structure your story and add the ups and downs. Remember that the story is about your audience and that you don’t have to do it alone.