Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

Understand the context. Build a clear understanding of who you are communicating to, what you need them to know or do, how you will communicate to them, and what data you have to back up your case. Employ concepts like the 3-minute story, the Big Idea, and storyboarding to articulate your story and plan the desired content and flow. Choose an appropriate visual display. When highlighting a number or two, simple text is best. Line charts are usually best for continuous data. Bar charts work great for categorical data and must have a zero baseline. Let the relationship you want to show guide the type of chart you choose. Avoid pies, donuts, 3D, and secondary y-axes due to difficulty of visual interpretation. Eliminate clutter. Identify elements that don’t add informative value and remove them from your visuals. Leverage the Gestalt principles to understand how people see and identify candidates for elimination. Use contrast strategically. Employ alignment of elements and maintain white space to help make the interpretation of your visuals a comfortable experience for your audience. Focus attention where you want it. Employ the power of preattentive attributes like color, size, and position to signal what’s important. Use these strategic attributes to draw attention to where you want your audience to look and guide your audience through your visual. Evaluate the effectiveness of preattentive attributes in your visual by applying the “where are your eyes drawn?” test. Think li...

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