Making Data Matter

Rudyard Kipling once wrote, “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” The same applies to data. Individuals need to embrace the fact that data will be remembered only if presented in the right way. Few individuals grasp how to use data to tell a meaningful story that resonates both intellectually and emotionally with an audience. Consider the following as you share your next analysis.

Tell a story.

Good stories make you think and great stories elicit emotion. A great story will put your whole brain to work, and the associated emotion will encode memories that make the information have a type of permanence.

Apply the same to your data visualization. In a study with more than 500 healthcare providers, we had observed that no single chart type (bars, lines, pies, etc) was significantly more effective in communicating the clinical data. Once embedded within a story, the outcomes did change. The charts inserted into a narrative were perceived to be clearer and more memorable.

Find the compelling narrative.

First, determine if the narrative is more educational or confirmatory to your audience. Present the facts, support them with data and tie them back to an implication for the business objectives at hand. This has to be done without being boring. You are competing for your audience’s attention, so make sure the narrative has a strong insight, dynamism, or a captivating purpose. Finding the narrative will help you decide whether you actually have a story to tell.

Know your audience.

What does the audience know about the topic? The story and visualizations needs to be framed around the level of information the audience already has, and needs to know.

Beginner: Fearful of overload, but doesn’t want oversimplification

Learner: Looking for an overview understanding and major themes

Managerial: Wants deep and action-driven intricacies and interrelationships of the data

Executive: Requires the conclusions of weighted probabilities

Find visuals that support your narrative, not visuals that are “the way we always do it”.

It has been proven that our brain learns to ignore certain overused words and phrases that have historically had the greatest impact. Scientists, in the midst of researching the topic of storytelling have discovered, that certain words and phrases have lost all storytelling power. The same could be said for data visualizations. Find the chart types that work with your narrative, and use them with typical best practices, regardless how certain charts have been ‘labeled’.

Edward Tufte once said “the only thing worse than a pie chart is several of them” and I couldn’t disagree more. Pie charts do have a role in today’s data stories.

Robert Kocera recently wrote, “We’ve turned the understanding of charts into formulas instead of encouraging people to think and ask questions. That doesn’t produce better charts, it just gives people ways of feeling superior by parroting something about chart junk or 3D being bad. There is little to no research to back these things up.”

When we share a great analysis, we should be striving to activate multiple regions of the brain through better storytelling. Few forms of communication are as persuasive as a compelling narrative. To this end, visualizations need to tell a story to the audience too. Storytelling helps the viewer gain insight from the data.

The narrative has to build the story that the data supports — and the story must be crafted to the audience.