An extraordinary amount of data flows through businesses in the course of an average day.
Data-driven insights are driving a new wave of business intelligence, helping to move things forward with rapid business impact.
However, with the increasing reliance and use of embedded analytics in everyday business decision-making, the demand for easily consumable and interactive data dashboards is on the rise.
Analytics Dashboards Dashboards have become essential to help leaders and executives make quick decisions. For these dashboards to be truly effective and impactful, data insights must be communicated using design best practices. But it doesn’t have to stop there. Analysts must communicate data insights to stakeholders with infectious passion and enthusiasm.
This is where the importance of data storytelling comes in.
Storytelling is a valuable tool that has helped build social cohesion for millennia, and it also permeates the seemingly abstract world of complex numbers and statistics.
Combining data analysis with good storytelling The benefits of storytelling are manifold. Through storytelling, stakeholders can more easily process the complex business information presented by their data. Additionally, stories improve memory, making it easier for stakeholders to retain information. Stories are also known to induce the release of hormones, oxytocin and cortisol, helping to create a lasting impact on the audience. According to one estimate, we can remember facts up to 22 times more effectively when they are part of a story than when they are presented as isolated data points. Information presented in the form of a story also helps to strengthen our understanding and decipher patterns in complex data sets.
The human brain has difficulty making sense of a lot of information presented in raw data or in a form close to nature. A famous example demonstrates the importance of graphic storytelling: Anscombe Quartet, created by Francis Anscombe in 1973. The figure shows four different data sets with nearly identical variance, mean, correlation between X and Y coordinates, and linear regression lines. However, the patterns are different when plotted on a graph.
Useful data visualization helps human cognition of abstract data points by emphasizing analytical reasoning and using an interactive visual interface.
What is effective data storytelling?
By infusing data points with strategic creativity, they will become compelling, digestible, and impactful. Our human brain loves a good story and finds it easy to grasp difficult concepts if they are summarized and presented in story form. That’s why fables and tales have always been an essential part of our culture. The same goes for numbers, statistics, and data science.
According to neurological research, when a user sees a data visualization, it takes just under 500 milliseconds for the human eye and brain to process the pre-attentive visual properties of an image. With the information overload we are subjected to in our daily lives today, well-told data stories with compelling visuals are essential to retain attention and deliver maximum value to stakeholders.
Data storytelling is becoming a core skill within the analytics industry, as evidenced by the growing demand for professionals with data storytelling skills.
Data storytelling provides deeper insights that are not readily apparent with simple descriptive and statistical methods, thereby accelerating decision-making. Using sound data visualization principles is an essential element of compelling data storytelling. John Tukey, the American mathematician and statistician, famously observed: “The greatest value of an image is when it forces us to notice what we did not expect to see..”
However, you should be careful not to overload the visual. High cognitive load results from cluttered visualization and too much effort to understand the message. This can lead to disengagement from your audience.
Using pre-attentive attributes and size and color contrasts will help deliver a stunning visualization that conveys its points in a simple way while reducing the cognitive load on readers.
According to Colin Ware’s Information Visualization:Perception for design, there are four pre-attentive visual properties:
- Color
- Form
- Movement
- Spatial positioning
Strategically using these pre-attentive visual principles and combining them with cutting-edge data-driven insights will create compelling and impactful data analytics for business stakeholders, leading to increased adoption and improved ROI on analytics investments.
Elements of Data Storytelling
There are certain elements that need to be considered and deployed to deliver effective storytelling with data.
- First, understand stakeholder expectations – Understand user skill levels and expectations, what KPIs they track, what type of analysis they want. Determine whether they are interested in in-depth analysis or high-level reporting. Once you understand your user’s requirements and persona, you can start crafting the story that best fits them.
- Set the context for your story – Context helps explain the setting and set the mood for the story, helping to engage the user, bridge the gap, create interest, and communicate your point more effectively.
- Define the story life cycle – All stories have certain universal elements in common – characters, conflicts, and a redemption arc – that help make the story engaging and impactful.
- Map the story using visuals – Next, once you’ve defined the character’s narrative arc, choose the right visuals to tell the story. There’s a helpful rule of thumb when selecting charts and graphs on your dashboards. Think of each visualization as the answer to a question. The entire dashboard should also be the answer to a question that can be answered at a glance. Use the principles of visual hierarchy to organize and place visuals.
- Story Overview and Walkthrough – Communicating ideas should be about more than just spreading information. Using infectious passion and energy to tell the story will help convey the company’s results and actions with the speed and impact it needs. As author Anne Lindbergh says: “Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as difficult to sleep after.“
A practical test for a good dashboard
Ask your colleague to glance at it for 4-5 seconds and look away. Then ask them what they can take away from the dashboard – what metrics and numbers. The more they can remember and effectively communicate what they understood from the dashboard, the more likely it is that your dashboard has served its purpose and is good. If they can’t remember the key data points, then perhaps your design isn’t simple enough to communicate effectively.
Wrap
While there are many visualization options available to data professionals today, analysts must deliver impactful data-driven analytics that focus on simplicity, ease, and reducing cognitive load on users. Data analytics has become a key differentiator in today’s top-performing organizations. The need for data storytelling has emerged And it will become even more important over time. By facilitating the communication of relevant information, data storytelling will help companies quickly capitalize on market opportunities and stay ahead of the curve.
