Data storytelling

1. Data storytelling

Welcome back! In this chapter, we will zoom out and highlight data storytelling.

2. A picture tells a thousand words?

Take a look at this visualization. What is it trying to tell you? Pause the video for a moment and try to uncover the insight contained within. This visualization is very hard to parse and gain any helpful information. The number of patients with a pain index of one increased after treatment the number with a five decreased.But, it isn't clear whether a one or a five is good or bad, and the overall impact is hard to understand. Now let's look at that same information through the lens of data storytelling.

3. A story tells a single insight

The data story tells us a clearer picture of patient care. Patient care has improved dramatically as a result of revised pain management procedures. The small paragraph accompanying the visualizations gives us helpful background information on what was changed and concluded by telling us these practices should be expanded to more patients for improved care. So what did we change between the first set of visuals and the data story?

4. Spot the difference

Our data story used robust visualizations and added background or context with a touch of narrative to create something much more potent than the stand-alone visualization.

5. Why?

But why do we even want to tell data stories? What is their value when communicating data insights? Data stories have three key distinctions: they are easier to understand than other methods, inspire action better, and your audience retains the information much longer. Data stories take the easy-to-understand nature of visualizations and pair it with written communication in the form of narrative and context; this allows a much wider audience to gain value from the story since they don’t need to know all the details behind the visualization to understand it.

6. Engagement

When people interact with a data story, they are much more likely to engage with it and be persuaded by it than if they just saw raw numbers alone. Researchers studied optimizing donations to the save the children charity organization. They found that, on average, when potential donors were presented with data about the impact of famine on the children of Africa, the average donation was about one dollar and 14 cents. Showing the donors a story instead of raw data increased the contribution by more than double to two dollars and 38 cents. Stories engage people to take action, and in our current environment of excess data, data stories can turn that excess data into action.

7. Sticky situation

Data stories also benefit from being more sticky than other forms of communication. Can you remember how much money people donated when they were shown data only for the Save the Children’s organization without scrolling back? How about the impact of a story compared to data alone? The average amount donated was one dollar and 14 cents, and the stories had a considerable positive impact on the donation amounts. Like most people, remembering individual numbers is very difficult, but it was much easier to remember the idea that stories are more engaging than data alone. When students at Stanford University listened to crime statistics presentations, only 5% of students could remember the statistics after ten minutes, but 63% could remember the impact of the stories. Data stories stick better than visualization or data alone.

8. Let's practice!

Data storytelling is a powerful tool to convey emotion, inspire action and stick in your audience's mind. Let's see how sticky this information is by completing some exercises to reinforce your understanding.

Create Your Free Account

By continuing, you accept our Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy and that your data is stored in the USA.