Storytelling with data: Mar 20: chapters 8-9

[elle]

Book: Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

Aiming to read:

Chapter 8: pulling it all together Chapter 9: case studies

MC: @kunzmann Notes: @mcgain

See you all at 12pm AEDT, Mar 20th @ https://blackmill.whereby.com/bookclub

As always, if you'd like a calendar invite and/or access to Slack beforehand, get in touch via gday@blackmill.co.

[elle]

8: Putting it all together

Case study to apply preceding lessons — using a single example

1. Context: consider the who, what, and how
   1. What is the big idea?
2. Choosing an appropriate display — in our case, trend in price over time
   • Declutter steps:
     • Remove colour
     • Highlight the years after c product was introduced
     • Change from bar graph to line graphs
     • Consolidate the years - remove multiple years labels, but bring back the colour. Easier to see the information because each product is relative to the other products

3. Eliminate clutter even more
   • De-emphasise the chart title
   • Remove borders and gridlines
   • Push x- and y-axis labels to the background
   • Remove the variance in colours between the various lines
   • Label lines directly
4. Draw attention where you want your audience to focus
5. Think like a designer
   • Make the visual accessible with text
   • Align elements to improve aesthetics
6. Tell a story

Changing components of a graph in Excel Typically, you format a series of data (a line or a series of bars) all at once. Sometimes, however, it can be useful to have certain points formatted differently—for example, to draw attention to specific parts, as illustrated in Figures 8.7, 8.8, and 8.9. To do this, click on the data series once to highlight it, then click again to highlight just the point of interest. Right-click and select Format Data Point to open the menu that will allow you to reformat the specific point as desired (for example, to change the colour or add a data marker). Repeat this process for each data point you want to modify. It takes time, but the resulting visual is easier to comprehend for your audience. It is time well spent.

9: case studies

Case study 1: colour considerations with a dark background

• Harder to read
• General recommendation: black over white is better!

Case study 2: leveraging animations

• Leverage animation to walk your audience through your visual as your tell your story

Case study 3: logic in order

• There should be logic in the order in which we display information
• For example, starting with the most satisfied customers… or it might the least satisfied customers… or the story could be around the least used features…

Case study 4: strategies for avoiding the spaghetti graph

• Emphasise each line at a time
• Separate spatially

Case study 5: alternatives to pies

• Show the numbers directly
• Simple bar graph
• 100% stacked horizontal bar graph

When you find yourself in a situation where you are unsure how to proceed, I nearly always recommend the same strategy: pause to consider your audience. What do you need them to know or do? What story do you aim to tell them? Often, by answering these questions, a good path for how to present your data will become clear. If one doesn’t, try several views and seek feedback.