Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

“Power Corrupts. PowerPoint Corrupts Absolutely.” —Edward Tufte, Yale Professor Emeritus1

Having all the information in the world at our fingertips doesn’t make it easier to communicate: it makes it harder. The more information you’re dealing with, the more difficult it is to filter down to the most important bits.

success in data visualization does not start with data visualization.

Exploratory analysis is what you do to understand the data and figure out what might be noteworthy or interesting to highlight to others.

the explanatory space, meaning you have a specific thing you want to explain, a specific story you want to tell—

Too often, people err and think it’s OK to show exploratory analysis (simply present the data, all 100 oysters) when they should be showing explanatory

Here are some action words to help act as thought starters as you determine what you are asking of your audience: accept | agree | begin | believe | change | collaborate | commence | create | defend | desire | differentiate | do | empathize | empower | encourage | engage | establish | examine | facilitate | familiarize | form | implement | include | influence | invest | invigorate | know | learn | like | persuade | plan | promote | pursue | recommend | receive | remember | report | respond | secure | support | simplify | start | try | understand | validate

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.

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

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.

While tables interact with our verbal system, graphs interact with our visual system, which is faster at processing information.

Slopegraphs can be useful when you have two time periods or points of comparison and want to quickly show relative increases and decreases or differences across various categories between the two data points.