Curious about Storytelling

Table of contents

Storytelling - Introduction

Data is everywhere, and it continues to be a buzzing topic these days. You often come across data presentations where graphs and bullets linger around.

Storytelling with data is different for different people. It unlocks limitless possibilities where one can shape the available facts and statistics into any form.

This topic will enable to shift from merely showing data to storytelling with data. It is gearing up importance in the data-driven world of decision making. So let’s dive deep into the journey of Storytelling with Data.

Data storytelling hits an emotional and intellectual pulse that rivets your audience and engages them.

Significance of Storytelling

Storytelling holds significant importance across various aspects of human communication, culture, and understanding. Its significance can be observed in several ways:

• Engagement and Attention: Storytelling captures and maintains the audience’s attention. Well-crafted stories are inherently engaging, making it easier to convey information, ideas, and emotions effectively.

• Memory and Retention: Stories are more memorable than isolated facts or data. When information is presented in a narrative format, it is easier for people to remember and recall. This is particularly important in education, marketing, and communication.

• Emotional Connection: Stories have the power to evoke emotions and empathy. They allow the audience to relate to characters and situations, which can be used to create a deeper emotional connection between the storyteller and the audience. This emotional connection is valuable in advertising, branding, and advocacy.

• Sense-Making: Stories help people make sense of the world. They provide a framework for understanding complex issues, solving problems, and interpreting events. In business and leadership, storytelling can clarify vision and strategy.

• Conflict Resolution: Stories can be used to address conflicts and promote understanding. Narratives that highlight shared experiences or perspectives can bridge divides and foster reconciliation.

• Teaching and Learning: Stories are powerful teaching tools. They simplify complex concepts, illustrate lessons, and make information relatable. They are commonly used in education at all levels.

• Inspiration: Stories of personal achievement, triumph over adversity, or acts of heroism inspire individuals and communities. They can motivate people to take action and strive for positive change.

• Shared Values and Beliefs: Stories can convey shared values, beliefs, and moral lessons within a culture or community. They serve as a means of reinforcing cultural norms and ethics.

• Social Bonding: Storytelling is a social activity that fosters connections between individuals and groups. It can create a sense of belonging and shared experience.

What is Context in Storytelling

• Context in storytelling refers to the framework or background information that surrounds and informs a narrative.
• It provides essential details and conditions that help the audience understand the story more fully.
• Context encompasses various elements, including the setting, time period, cultural norms, character backgrounds, and relevant historical or situational factors.
• It enhances the audience’s understanding of the narrative, immerses them in the fictional world, and makes the story more relatable and meaningful.
• Effective use of context is essential for creating a rich and engaging storytelling experience.

Importance of Context

It is essential to understand, what the audience needs to know or do

Now let’s focus on -

1. The importance of understanding the context
2. Know your audience
3. Communication medium and mechanism
4. The required tone of communication

Communicating the right message to the audience is your motive. To achieve this one needs to have a clarity of the motive and message to be conveyed.

Selecting Appropriate Visual in Storytelling

Selecting appropriate visuals in storytelling is essential for enhancing the narrative and effectively conveying information, emotions, and concepts to the audience. Visual elements, such as images, illustrations, videos, charts, and graphs, can significantly impact the storytelling experience.

Here are some key considerations for selecting appropriate visuals in storytelling:

1. The most critical factor in selecting visuals is their relevance to the story.
2. Visuals can evoke emotions and add depth to the storytelling.
3. Maintain visual consistency throughout the story.
4. Visuals should be clear and easy to understand that may not confuse or overwhelm the audience
5. Choose visuals that are accessible and meaningful to your target audience.
6. Ensure that you have the legal rights or permissions to use the visuals in your storytelling.
7. Maintain a balanced ratio between text and visuals. Overreliance on either can disrupt the storytelling experience.
8. Consider accessibility guidelines when using visuals. Provide alternative text descriptions for images and ensure that visuals do not exclude individuals with disabilities.

Understanding Your Audience

Understanding your audience is a fundamental aspect of effective storytelling. It is important to remember that effective storytelling isn’t just about conveying information; it’s about creating a meaningful connection with your audience. By understanding your audience’s perspective, needs, and emotions, you can craft narratives that resonate deeply and leave a lasting impact.

Here are some points to note for understanding the audience

• Conduct audience research, persona to gain insights into their demographics, interests, values, and preferences.
• Identify the specific needs, challenges, and pain points your audience faces that your story can address.
• Tailor your story’s tone and emotional arc to align with your audience’s emotional responses.
• Use storytelling to answer “why” and “how” questions that resonate with your audience’s curiosity.
• Ensure that your story respects diverse perspectives and avoids stereotypes or offensive content.
• Use feedback to iterate and improve your storytelling approach for future content.

Exploratory Analysis Vs Explanatory Analysis

In summary,

• exploratory analysis is the initial phase of data analysis, focused on discovering insights and patterns in an open-ended manner.
• Explanatory analysis follows, with the goal of providing a detailed explanation and confirming or disproving hypotheses generated during the exploratory phase.
• Both approaches are essential in the data analysis process, but they serve different purposes and employ distinct techniques.

Selecting an Effective Visual

Visual presentation plays a vital role when one represents any Data or Information. One can represent data using different types of visual displays and a variety of graphs like:

• Simple Text
• Tables
• Graphs - Different categories of graphs (Points, Lines, Bars, and Area)

Simple Text

When the content or the information in the data is very less, one can represent that data using Simple Text.

Let’s illustrate this with an example.

• Two companies are producing the same Beverage, where ->
  — Company A produces 22 tons per month

  and

  — Company B produces 30 tons per month.

Here, one has two simple numbers. Hence, one can represent them as Simple Text -

Production Rate of Company A = 22%

Production Rate of Company B = 30%

Use Case: When Data is small and crisp, one can use simple text to convey, which reaches the audience easily.

Tables

One is aware of the fact that Tables consists of Rows and Columns. When one needs to showcase multiple units of measures - Tables come to rescue.

• Best practice ->

  Avoid using Tables during Live presentations - It grabs the attention of your Audience, and they do not focus on your point. Instead, you can use the Full table in Appendix for reference purpose.

Use Case: When you need to showcase different units of measure in a tabular format.

Heatmaps

It is another way to visualize the data in tabular format, but here, in place of numbers, one can make use of colored cells that convey the magnitude of the numbers. Refer the image above for clear understanding.

Use Case: A heat map chart is utilized to visualize complex data such as performance comparison of various companies, stock market investments, and market response.

Graphs

A well designed Graph with right information directly interacts with the visual system and grab the attention quickly rather than well-designed Table.

Graphs can be broadly classified into four Categories:

• Points
• Lines
• Bars
• Area

Points (Scatterplots)

Scatterplots are used to represent the relationship between two things. It consists of horizontal X-axis and Vertical Y-axis. When one plots the data against the two axes, one can get to see the existence of a relationship.

Use Case: These are frequently used to represent scientific data, Usage in the real world to represent Business is quite low.

Line Graph

The Line Graphs comes into picture when one has Data, which is in the form of series - Single series, two line series or multiple series.

Use Case: Line graphs are used to track changes over short and long periods of time.

Bar Graph

Bar Graph is one of the widely used graphs. These graphs are easily readable. One can easily:

• Compare the endpoints of the bars.
• Understand which category is smallest and biggest.
• Measure the incremental difference between two categories.

Use Case: Bar graphs are used to compare things between different groups or to track changes over time.

Best practice ->

• Always start the Bar graphs with Zero baseline.
• Make sure that Bars are wider than the white space between the bars.
• Bars should neither be too thin nor too thick; they should be of right width.

Commonly used Bar graphs are :

1. Vertical Bar -> Like Line bars, One can find single series, Two series and Multiple series of Vertical bars, These are used for showcasing categorical data.

2. Stacked Vertical Bar -> These are generally used for comparing categories; colors are used to highlight the comparison. However, the use cases for stacked vertical bars are very limited. The example illustrating stacked vertical bar is displayed above.

3. Horizontal Bar ->These are similar to Vertical Bars that have single series, Two series, and multiple series.

4. Stacked Horizontal Bar -> These are similar to stacked vertical bars where one can show the totals across different categories and also give sense to the sub component pieces.

Area

These graphs do not give high visual impact. Instead, they make it very difficult for Human eyes to understand from attributing quantitative value to two‐dimensional space. Area graphs are hard to read, and they make it difficult.

Which Graphs have to be Avoided?

There are few specific graphs and elements that need to be avoided, they are like:

• Pie chart
• Donut chart
• 3D
• Secondary Y - Axis

These graphs create a lot of visual confusion

Look into Clutter

Clutter is the visual element that takes space and makes visuals appear more complicated than necessary. The presence of clutter doesn’t increase understanding. Instead, it creates worst or uncomfortable user experience for the audience. Thus one should run the risk of the audience getting distracted and disinterested in the presentation.

Resultant -> one can lose the connection with the audience.

Always treat the Clutter as the Enemy and try reducing them as much as possible!

Preattentive Attributes

By using Preattentive attributes strategically, one can help the audience to see what one wants to show them much before they even know they are seeing them.

Few preattentive attributes are important from a strategic standpoint when it comes to focussing audiences attention, They are -

• Size - Relative size denotes relative importance. When the focus is on one important thing, leverage the Size factor to indicate that and make it big!

• Color - Highlighting important aspects using colors is an effective method to grab the user’s attention. There are specific lessons to know when you use colors -

  1. Use it sparingly and consistently.
  2. Design with the colorblind in mind.
  3. Be thoughtful of the tone color conveys.
  4. Consider whether to leverage brand colors.

• Position on Page - Always position an important message, facts or data at the top that one wishes to show. Be thoughtful of positioning elements on a page.

Understanding from Designer’s Perspective

The important part of data visualizations is - to be able to convey what one wants to and the audience to do with the data that one is presenting to them.

Understanding how design concepts can be used to support communicating with data.

Following 4 A’s is essential:

• Affordances
• Accessibility
• Aesthetics
• Acceptance

Affordances

It is making it obvious about how a product is to be used.

e.g.: (Push symbol on a button) symbolizes that the button needs to be pushed for required action to take place.

• Highlighting important text, use of bold/italics case.
• Eliminating distractions.
• Summarizing where details are not required.
• Filtering important and required facts.
• Retaining summarized information.
• Push necessary and non‐message‐impacting items to the background.

Accessibility

The concept of accessibility is that people of different abilities should be able to use the designs.

• Use a consistent and easy‐to‐read font.
• Clean data is best to be noticed.
• Keep your language simple and straightforward.

Aesthetics

Beautifying your Data Presentation

• Be smart with color.
• Pay attention to alignment.
• Leverage white space, keep margins so that they don’t overfill the space with graphics.

Acceptance

Your intended audience must accept your data.

• Articulate the benefits of the new or different approach that you plan to convey. This helps to build comfortable environment for your audience to listen to your ideas and views.
• Get a vocal member of your audience on board. Identify influential members of your audience and talk to them one‐on‐one in an effort to gain acceptance of your design.
• Be aware of cultural color connotations. Make it a point to avoid colors that are culturally not accepted by Clients region or culture.
• Design keeping color blind in mind.

Data Insight

Data Insight is defined as the value obtained through the use of analytics and storytelling with data. The insights gained through analytics are incredibly powerful and can be used to grow business while identifying areas of opportunity.

Storytelling with Data : Best practices ~

1. Be well versed with the tools, example excel, google sheets, PowerPoint or any Data Analysis tools which one can use, eg. Tableau, Python, etc.

2. Consider a discussion with the audience and give importance to feedback and point of views if they share, sometimes it will give a boost or added advantage to the story.

3. Devote time to storytelling with data.

4. Take inspiration from good examples, share some live examples.

5. Keep the style natural.

6. Enjoy and connect with the audience. Along with delivering skills a person should be a good listener for effective communication.