1. Visualizing and communicating your insights
Now that we have finished our analysis, we are ready to share our results. In this video, we'll discuss what to consider to communicate your insights effectively.
2. A picture tells a thousand words
Say we want to communicate what the biggest barriers are for employees at Polaris Tech while working remotely.
We could just give a ranking and maybe add in some percentages.
3. A picture tells a thousand words
But we could also visualize the same information. Doing so tends to draw more attention than just giving raw numbers.
On top of that, we can more easily deduce additional information.
For example, when comparing the different categories, we can quickly see that difficulty collaborating and interruptions are mentioned by far more employees than noisy environment or lack of privacy.
4. Things to consider when communicating your insights
When communicating your insights, you need to remember the following key considerations.
First, choose the right format. Depending on your audience, you must adapt how you present your analysis and insight. For example, management is generally interested in results. If you report to a team of data specialists, they will also be interested in the technical details of how the analysis was done.
Second, using narrative structure, you'll give structure to your communication which will help get your message across.
Third, using visualizations will help your audience understand how you got to your insights. As they say, a picture says more than a thousand words.
In the following slides, we'll discuss each of these considerations further.
5. Choose the right format
When considering the format, you need to distinguish between two common types of format: the final presentation or report and the technical documentation. Typically both will be needed, but they have very distinct content.
The final report or presentation is aimed at the management of the business team where the business problem originated. Their primary concern is, of course, a solution to their problem, so the focus lies on the results, insights, and actions that can be taken. Typically, this presentation or report will use lots of visualizations.
The technical documentation is aimed at data specialists. It is necessary to understand how the analysis was conducted, allowing a reproduction or follow-up analysis. It will therefore contain a lot of technical details and especially a detailed explanation of the methodology.
6. Use a narrative structure
To help you structure your communication, you can make use of a narrative structure. This is a technique from storytelling, to help keep your audience engaged and communicate your insights effectively.
First, the problem is introduced. This problem is supported by the necessary background to understand the problem. The supporting insights then lead up to the central insight of your analysis. Finally, we end our communication with a proposed solution to the business problem and recommendations.
7. Support insights with visualizations
Visualizations can help in many ways. It helps your audience to understand complex information at a glance.
It will therefore go a long way in making it easier for your audience to understand the insights identified in the data and keep them in mind.
Lastly, another important use of visualizations is drawing attention to your results' key aspects.
8. Let's practice!
Time for you to practice communicating your insights!