1. Storytelling in action
I hope you enjoyed those exercises. We are going to tackle putting storytelling into action in this lesson. There are numerous ways to create a data story. We are going to focus on one approach. I encourage you to try these techniques and develop some of your own.
2. Starting line
We can employ a two-step process to develop stories to get us started. Step one, what are we trying to convey? Is there an insight or objective of our analysis we intend to share? Step two, what is the best visualization to achieve this outcome? We can use this as our starting point.
3. Buildingsway
Buildingsway conducted a survey to find out what areas of their business they excelled at compared to their competitors and areas they could improve. Respondents were asked to score Buildingsway on how well they performed in key areas of the ordering process. This dataset represents the scores Buildingsway and its competitors received with zero being the lowest score and one being the highest possible score.
4. Scatter dud
Let's visualize a few options for grappling with this data. This scatter plot is about as clear as mud. We can't observe any patterns and the dataset is more confusing to interpret than its raw form.
5. Line them up
A line chart doesn’t make much sense at all either since the dataset doesn't involve the required time dimension.
6. Two graphs walk into a bar
A bar chart looks promising, but it still is difficult to parse. Ultimately this visual doesn't add much more than just the raw data
7. What a difference
Let's think back to step one. Our goal is to show the difference between Buildingsway and its competitors.
Instead of trying to cram two bars onto the chart, if we focus on displaying only the differences, it becomes a lot easier to read. And just like that, we have refined our focus. However, with step 2 in mind, the visual still looks a bit ragged.
8. Rough around the edges
We can sort the bars, and suddenly things start to come into focus. Looking at the poorly rated areas, they mainly revolve around staff interactions with the customer. We found our narrative!
In order to compete better, we should invest in improving our staffing, we have the edge in the material areas of treehouse construction, and staff interactions are the most significant area for improvement.
9. Leveling up
This data story would perform well in an interactive presentation where you could add context and focus the narrative interactively with the audience. Instead of leaving it here, we can improve the story to be more versatile.
Incorporating text, utilizing color intentionally, and simplifying visual elements are three universal principles for improving the quality of data stories.
10. Getting wordy
Adding an explainer paragraph that clearly outlines the findings and next steps is a great way to hone a data story. Visuals shouldn’t have to sit by themselves. Text is a powerful and often overlooked tool. Notice the additional header we added at the bottom as well.
11. Coloring between the lines
Intentional color usage is a bit trickier. The current color scheme is acceptable, but what if we tried something like this to draw the eye into our text component and visual simultaneously?
Color is potent, so we don’t want to overdo it, and some organizations may resist utilizing color, but strong and subtle usage of color is a significant differentiator.
12. Simplifying the journey
Finally, we want to simplify our visual elements, and just like color, this can be subjective, so I encourage you to look at this and see what feels right and what doesn’t feel right. We can remove the gridlines. They aren’t giving us any valuable information, enlarge the labels to make scanning the chart easier, and now it looks much cleaner than before. You could do more depending on your personal preferences here as well.
This process is an excellent example of taking a rocky starting point to something more substantial. We polished the story with some tricks you can use for your next data story; overall, the story is much better.
13. Let's practice!
Lets jump into some exercises!