Storytelling with Data

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

  Ignore the nonsupporting data?

  You might assume that showing only the data that backs up your point and ignoring the rest will make for a stronger case. I do not recommend this. Beyond being misleading by painting a one-sided story, this is very risky. A discerning audience will poke holes in a story that doesn’t hold up or data that shows one aspect but ignores the rest. The right amount of context and supporting and opposing data will vary depending on the situation, the level of trust you have with your audience, and other factors.

  Who, what, and how: illustrated by example

  Let’s consider a specific example to illustrate these concepts. Imagine you are a fourth grade science teacher. You just wrapped up an experimental pilot summer learning program on science that was aimed at giving kids exposure to the unpopular subject. You surveyed the children at the onset and end of the program to understand whether and how perceptions toward science changed. You believe the data shows a great success story. You would like to continue to offer the summer learning program on science going forward.

  Let’s start with the who by identifying our audience. There are a number of different potential audiences who might be interested in this information: parents of students who participated in the program, parents of prospective future participants, the future potential participants themselves, other teachers who might be interested in doing something similar, or the budget committee that controls the funding you need to continue the program. You can imagine how the story you would tell to each of these audiences might differ. The emphasis might change. The call to action would be different for the different groups. The data you would show (or the decision to show data at all) could be different for the various audiences. You can imagine how, if we crafted a single communication meant to address all of these disparate audiences’ needs, it would likely not exactly meet any single audience’s need. This illustrates the importance of identifying a specific audience and crafting a communication with that specific audience in mind.

  Let’s assume in this case the audience we want to communicate to is the budget committee, which controls the funding we need to continue the program.

  Now that we have answered the question of who, the what becomes easier to identify and articulate. If we’re addressing the budget committee, a likely focus would be to demonstrate the success of the program and ask for a specific funding amount to continue to offer it. After identifying who our audience is and what we need from them, next we can think about the data we have available that will act as evidence of the story we want to tell. We can leverage the data collected via survey at the onset and end of the program to illustrate the increase in positive perceptions of science before and after the pilot summer learning program.

  This won’t be the last time we’ll consider this example. Let’s recap who we have identified as our audience, what we need them to know and do, and the data that will help us make our case:

  Who: The budget committee that can approve funding for continuation of the summer learning program.

  What: The summer learning program on science was a success; please approve budget of $X to continue.

  How: Illustrate success with data collected through the survey conducted before and after the pilot program.

  Consulting for context: questions to ask

  Often, the communication or deliverable you are creating is at the request of someone else: a client, a stakeholder, or your boss. This means you may not have all of the context and might need to consult with the requester to fully understand the situation. There is sometimes additional context in the head of this requester that they may assume is known or not think to say out loud. Following are some questions you can use as you work to tease out this information. If you’re on the requesting side of the communication and asking your support team to build a communication, think about answering these questions for them up front:

  What background information is relevant or essential?

  Who is the audience or decision maker? What do we know about them?

  What biases does our audience have that might make them supportive of or resistant to our message?

  What data is available that would strengthen our case? Is our audience familiar with this data, or is it new?

  Where are the risks: what factors could weaken our case and do we need to proactively address them?

  What would a successful outcome look like?

  If you only had a limited amount of time or a single sentence to tell your audience what they need to know, what would you say?

  In particular, I find that these last two questions can lead to insightful conversation. Knowing what the desired outcome is before you start preparing the communication is critical for structuring it well. Putting a significant constraint on the message (a short amount of time or a single sentence) can help you to boil the overall communication down to the single, most important message. To that end, there are a couple of concepts I recommend knowing and employing: the 3-minute story and the Big Idea.

  The 3-minute story & Big Idea

  The idea behind each of these concepts is that you are able to boil the “so-what” down to a paragraph and, ultimately, to a single, concise statement. You have to really know your stuff—know what the most important pieces are as well as what isn’t essential in the most stripped-down version. While it sounds easy, being concise is often more challenging than being verbose. Mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal recognized this in his native French, with a statement that translates roughly to “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time” (a sentiment often attributed to Mark Twain).

  3-minute story

  The 3-minute story is exactly that: if you had only three minutes to tell your audience what they need to know, what would you say? This is a great way to ensure you are clear on and can articulate the story you want to tell. Being able to do this removes you from dependence on your slides or visuals for a presentation. This is useful in the situation where your boss asks you what you’re working on or if you find yourself in an elevator with one of your stakeholders and want to give her the quick rundown. Or if your half-hour on the agenda gets shortened to ten minutes, or to five. If you know exactly what it is you want to communicate, you can make it fit the time slot you’re given, even if it isn’t the one for which you are prepared.

  Big Idea

  The Big Idea boils the so-what down even further: to a single sentence. This is a concept that Nancy Duarte discusses in her book, Resonate (2010). She says the Big Idea has three components:

  It must articulate your unique point of view;

  It must convey what’s at stake; and

  It must be a complete sentence.

  Let’s consider an illustrative 3-minute story and Big Idea, leveraging the summer learning program on science example that was introduced previously.

  3-minute story: A group of us in the science department were brainstorming about how to resolve an ongoing issue we have with incoming fourth-graders. It seems that when kids get to their first science class, they come in with this attitude that it’s going to be difficult and they aren’t going to like it. It takes a good amount of time at the beginning of the school year to get beyond that. So we thought, what if we try to give kids exposure to science sooner? Can we influence their perception? We piloted a learning program last summer aimed at doing just that. We invited elementary school students and ended up with a large group of second- and third-graders. Our goal was to give them earlier exposure to science in hopes of forming positive perception. To test whether we were successful, we surveyed the students before and after the program. We found that, going into the program, the biggest segment of students, 40%, felt just “OK” about science, whereas after the program, most of these shifted into positive perceptions, with nearly 70% of total students expressing some level of interest toward science. We feel that this demonstrates the success of the program and that we should not only continue to offer it, but also to expand
our reach with it going forward.

  Big Idea: The pilot summer learning program was successful at improving students’ perceptions of science and, because of this success, we recommend continuing to offer it going forward; please approve our budget for this program.

  When you’ve articulated your story this clearly and concisely, creating content for your communication becomes much easier. Let’s shift gears now and discuss a specific strategy when it comes to planning content: storyboarding.

  Storyboarding

  Storyboarding is perhaps the single most important thing you can do up front to ensure the communication you craft is on point. The storyboard establishes a structure for your communication. It is a visual outline of the content you plan to create. It can be subject to change as you work through the details, but establishing a structure early on will set you up for success. When you can (and as makes sense), get acceptance from your client or stakeholder at this step. It will help ensure that what you’re planning is in line with the need.

  When it comes to storyboarding, the biggest piece of advice I have is this: don’t start with presentation software. It is too easy to go into slide-generating mode without thinking about how the pieces fit together and end up with a massive presentation deck that says nothing effectively. Additionally, as we start creating content via our computer, something happens that causes us to form an attachment to it. This attachment can be such that, even if we know what we’ve created isn’t exactly on the mark or should be changed or eliminated, we are sometimes resistant to doing so because of the work we’ve already put in to get it to where it is.

  Avoid this unnecessary attachment (and work!) by starting low tech. Use a whiteboard, Post-it notes, or plain paper. It’s much easier to put a line through an idea on a piece of paper or recycle a Post-it note without feeling the same sense of loss as when you cut something you’ve spent time creating with your computer. I like using Post-it notes when I storyboard because you can rearrange (and add and remove) the pieces easily to explore different narrative flows.

  If we storyboard our communication for the summer learning program on science, it might look something like Figure 1.2.

  Figure 1.2 Example storyboard

  Note that in this example storyboard, the Big Idea is at the end, in the recommendation. Perhaps we’d want to consider leading with that to ensure that our audience doesn’t miss the main point and to help set up why we are communicating to them and why they should care in the first place. We’ll discuss additional considerations related to the narrative order and flow in Chapter 7.

  In closing

  When it comes to explanatory analysis, being able to concisely articulate exactly who you want to communicate to and what you want to convey before you start to build content reduces iterations and helps ensure that the communication you build meets the intended purpose. Understanding and employing concepts like the 3-minute story, the Big Idea, and storyboarding will enable you to clearly and succinctly tell your story and identify the desired flow.

  While pausing before actually building the communication might feel like it’s a step that slows you down, in fact it helps ensure that you have a solid understanding of what you want to do before you start creating content, which will save you time down the road.

  With that, consider your first lesson learned. You now understand the importance of context.

  chapter 2

  choosing an effective visual

  There are many different graphs and other types of visual displays of information, but a handful will work for the majority of your needs. When I look back over the 150+ visuals that I created for workshops and consulting projects in the past year, there were only a dozen different types of visuals that I used (Figure 2.1). These are the visuals we’ll focus on in this chapter.

  Figure 2.1 The visuals I use most

  Simple text

  When you have just a number or two to share, simple text can be a great way to communicate. Think about solely using the number—making it as prominent as possible—and a few supporting words to clearly make your point. Beyond potentially being misleading, putting one or only a couple of numbers in a table or graph simply causes the numbers to lose some of their oomph. When you have a number or two that you want to communicate, think about using the numbers themselves.

  To illustrate this concept, let’s consider the following example. A graph similar to Figure 2.2 accompanied an April 2014 Pew Research Center report on stay-at-home moms.

  Figure 2.2 Stay-at-home moms original graph

  The fact that you have some numbers does not mean that you need a graph! In Figure 2.2, quite a lot of text and space are used for a grand total of two numbers. The graph doesn’t do much to aid in the interpretation of the numbers (and with the positioning of the data labels outside of the bars, it can even skew your perception of relative height such that 20 is less than half of 41 doesn’t really come across visually).

  In this case, a simple sentence would suffice: 20% of children had a traditional stay-at-home mom in 2012, compared to 41% in 1970.

  Alternatively, in a presentation or report, your visual could look something like Figure 2.3.

  Figure 2.3 Stay-at-home moms simple text makeover

  As a side note, one consideration in this specific example might be whether you want to show an entirely different metric. For example, you could reframe in terms of the percent change: “The number of children having a traditional stay-at-home mom decreased more than 50% between 1970 and 2012.” I advise caution, however, any time you reduce from multiple numbers down to a single one—think about what context may be lost in doing so. In this case, I find that the actual magnitude of the numbers (20% and 41%) is helpful in interpreting and understanding the change.

  When you have just a number or two that you want to communicate: use the numbers directly.

  When you have more data that you want to show, generally a table or graph is the way to go. One thing to understand is that people interact differently with these two types of visuals. Let’s discuss each in detail and look at some specific varieties and use cases.

  Tables

  Tables interact with our verbal system, which means that we read them. When I have a table in front of me, I typically have my index finger out: I’m reading across rows and down columns or I’m comparing values. Tables are great for just that—communicating to a mixed audience whose members will each look for their particular row of interest. If you need to communicate multiple different units of measure, this is also typically easier with a table than a graph.

  Tables in live presentations

  Using a table in a live presentation is rarely a good idea. As your audience reads it, you lose their ears and attention to make your point verbally. When you find yourself using a table in a presentation or report, ask yourself: what is the point you are trying to make? Odds are that there will be a better way to pull out and visualize the piece or pieces of interest. In the event that you feel you’re losing too much by doing this, consider whether including the full table in the appendix and a link or reference to it will meet your audience’s needs.

  One thing to keep in mind with a table is that you want the design to fade into the background, letting the data take center stage. Don’t let heavy borders or shading compete for attention. Instead, think of using light borders or simply white space to set apart elements of the table.

  Take a look at the example tables in Figure 2.4. As you do, note how the data stands out more than the structural components of the table in the second and third iterations (light borders, minimal borders).

  Figure 2.4 Table borders

  Borders should be used to improve the legibility of your table. Think about pushing them to the background by making them grey, or getting rid of them altogether. The data should be what stands out, not the borders.

  Recommended reading

  For more on table design, check out Stephen Few’s book, Show Me the Numbers. There is an entire cha
pter dedicated to the design of tables, with discussion on the structural components of tables and best practices in table design.

  Next, let’s shift our focus to a special case of tables: the heatmap.

  Heatmap

  One approach for mixing the detail you can include in a table while also making use of visual cues is via a heatmap. A heatmap is a way to visualize data in tabular format, where in place of (or in addition to) the numbers, you leverage colored cells that convey the relative magnitude of the numbers.

  Consider Figure 2.5, which shows some generic data in a table and also a heatmap.

  Figure 2.5 Two views of the same data

  In the table in Figure 2.5, you are left to read the data. I find myself scanning across rows and down columns to get a sense of what I’m looking at, where numbers are higher or lower, and mentally stack rank the categories presented in the table.

  To reduce this mental processing, we can use color saturation to provide visual cues, helping our eyes and brains more quickly target the potential points of interest. In the second iteration of the table on the right entitled “Heatmap,” the higher saturation of blue, the higher the number. This makes the process of picking out the tails of the spectrum—the lowest number (11%) and highest number (58%)—an easier and faster process than it was in the original table where we didn’t have any visual cues to help direct our attention.