USING DATA TO DELIVER A MESSAGE: STORYTELLING WITH DATA
Explaining the concept of data science to my grandma
As a data scientist, sometimes I find it complicated to explain the concept of “data” to my relatives and friends, who aren’t familiarized with the concepts associated with the world of analytics. When a concept and everything that revolves around it is so integrated into your mind as the concept of “data” is for me, it is hard to communicate your ideas in a simple and illustrative way to others. Imagine you are trying to explain what is “blockchain” to your grandmother or “the big bang theory” to a child. It is important to take a step backwards and start with the basics.
First of all, what is data? Data is nothing else than information in its simplest and purest format. Now ask yourself, how do people receive information in our society? Through the news, TV programs, digital newspapers, social networks, blogs, teachers in educational institutions, conversations at work, or even by having a chat with friends. All of this situations provide the same output: diverse insights.
Insights can be useful for some and irrelevant to others, opinions or facts, reliable or uncertain, based on data or intuition, but anyhow, they surely have a meaning for the person who is listening or reading about them. The aim of Data Science is to provide reliable and data-based information that will serve as valuable insights to the people that will use it. Of course, we can’t provide value without a proper communication of this information.
Does everybody speak “data”? The answer is no. So why are we trying to tell big truths in an unreadable language for most of the people? Isn’t it stupid? Could I find the Atlantida even with a Thera of instructions in Martian? We must explore ways to communicate reliable insights to people while providing the right tools for them to understand this “data language”.
We are living the era of Big Data and people must start understanding this relatively new universal concept. As data scientists, we shall facilitate the transition towards a data-driven society and make it as easy as possible. In my opinion, being able to communicate and illustrate insights in a compelling and simple way is what makes a data scientist go from good to great.
The magic of visualization
What a beautiful concept! Until languages existed and became uniformly spread it was impossible to communicate without and explanatory visualization. Language was born from the need to communicate with each other, but communication is not only achieved through words, we can also communicate through signs or even the movement of our own body. The theory of evolution shows that before language existed, homo sapiens communicated through signs and writing. Writing evolved from cave paintings to cuneiform writing, to hieroglyphs the alphabet.
Storytelling with data
Usability is an important concept related to data. Especially, when we talk about Open data (data available to everyone to access, use and share). Compared to the overall population, there are just a few people in the world with a complex understanding of data science. This is why it is so relevant to share data in a way that a common citizen would have no trouble understanding it.
Data must communicate something and help sharpen the message. And in order to communicate effectively, it must be compelling. It is a fact that humans respond to storytelling, but make no confusions, storytelling with data is not always easy to achieve. Generating tables, charts and graphs it’s way too easy these days. You can have all the information in the world and that doesn’t mean it’s easier to communicate: it actually makes it harder. The more data you’ve got, the harder to filter and choose the most important bits to highlight.
Every day we are massively collecting more and more data and there is a growing need to make sense of it. As Cole Nussbaumer puts it in his book Storytelling with data, “being able to visualize data and tell stories with it is the key to turning it into information that can be used to drive better decision making”. He explains the 6 tips to better communicate visually with data:
- Understand the context
- Choose an appropriate visual display
- Eliminate clutter
- Focus attention where you want it
- Think like a designer
- Tell a story
Eloquently said! To put it in another way: making graphs is not enough, take the time to understand the data, the user that is going to consume that piece of information and really think how would be the best way for that person to visualize it in order to understand the key insight out of that data.
If you find this article interesting, share it! And if you need advice on how to use data visualization to deliver the understandable insights to users, contact 8wires, we create data-driven platforms and we are ready to help you turn your data into insights.
