5 tips for storytelling with data

Whether as a basis for decisions or actions - for many companies, data is indispensable in internal and external communication. But only when the target group understands the numerical analyses can they be motivated to derive appropriate consequences from them. Stories help to simplify this complex world. However, the challenge for companies when visualizing data is to extract the essence from an excess of information and present it in such a way that it triggers understanding, emotion and action.A good start: tangible data in contextJust like in a good story, an evaluation should also have a beginning, middle and end section. The beginning, i.e. the introduction, puts the data in a context that the audience can identify with and that makes the information more tangible right at the start. What are the assumptions for a prediction? Why are we looking at this particular review? What is the reason for looking at these figures? The middle section is about the exploratory journey: Where do conflicts arise, where do numbers emerge that challenge our previous assumptions? Which findings could have a direct impact on the lives of the audience? The final part concludes with the conclusion: What impact do the content and chapters just presented have? What is the message? What opinion or moral of the story can companies and target groups take away?Get the narrative right: The audience and its prior knowledgeWhen preparing the information, it helps to have the end in mind so that the data is not just diffuse in the room, but has meaning. To achieve this, it is essential to know the audience better. With fact-rich content, it is therefore also important to know the level of knowledge of the respective target group: newcomers are coming across a topic for the first time. Generalists know the topic, but only want a rough overview. Managers, on the other hand, need actionable insights that can also go into depth and must be able to understand the context well. Experts are looking for the smallest details that can make a difference to their already extremely good understanding of a topic. Important questions for companies are therefore: What does the audience already know about the topic? What misconceptions might they even have about it? What can surprise them?Report, prediction or problem solving: story plots with dataStandardized story plots make it easier for the target group to classify the respective visualization or data story and filter out the most important insights from it. If the audience quickly realizes that a classic story is a comedy, for example, then it is easier for them to place the respective characters, symbols and actions in the story. The same applies to storytelling with data: Is it a report, a prediction or classic problem-solving stories? Analysts need to internalize in advance which story they want to tell in order to convey analytical content to a non-analytical audience.Consider data types: The right narrative perspectiveAs in film, the narrative perspective is a decisive factor that determines the impact of the characters. According to Marketing Manager Ben Jones, seven types of data stories can be considered:- Change over time, the depiction of transformations- Drill down, the explanation from the general to the specific- Zoom out, from the specific to the general- Contrast, a direct comparison of two or more protagonists- Intersection, which describes the intersection of two or more protagonists- Factors, the visualization of the causal effect of several storylines- Outlier, the story about outliers or special cases. Special casesThe choice of suitable data types depends primarily on how detailed the data is, whether there are exciting turning points, whether the story can be told chronologically, which factors exist for certain developments and which stories outliers can tell.Visualize data and facts correctly: More than just pie chartsOnce the structure, the target group, the plot and the narrative perspective have been determined, the next step is to visualize the data precisely. To ensure that the audience understands the content, internalizes it emotionally and interacts with the story, there are a few basic rules of visual presentation to follow: Superfluous visual details that are distracting should be omitted. Colors are only used to graphically represent differences in the data, not to visually prepare the graphic. Caution is advised with the popular pie charts, as they become confusing if there are more than four categories and inconspicuous differences in the angle sizes. Empty spaces should be used deliberately and not necessarily filled.