Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

You should always want your audience to know or do something. If you can’t concisely articulate that, you should revisit whether you need to communicate in the first place.

In general, those communicating with data need to take a more confident stance when it comes to making specific observations and recommendations based on their analysis.

And know that even if you highlight or recommend the wrong thing, it prompts the right sort of conversation focused on action. When it really isn’t appropriate to recommend an action explicitly, encourage discussion toward one. Suggesting possible next steps can be a great way to get the conversation going because it gives your audience something to react to rather than starting with a blank slate.

Consulting for context: questions to ask

Gestalt Principles of Visual Perception.

It is best to avoid diagonal elements on the page.

Remember, every single element adds cognitive load on the part of your audience.

so apparent so quickly because in this

One word of warning in using preattentive attributes: when you highlight one point in your story, it can actually make other points harder to see. When you’re doing exploratory analysis, you should mostly avoid the use of preattentive attributes for this reason. When it comes to explanatory analysis, however, you should have a specific story you are communicating to your audience. Leverage preattentive attributes to help make that story visually clear.

don’t let your design choices be happenstance; rather, they should be the result of explicit decisions.

Resist the urge to use color for the sake of being colorful; instead, leverage color selectively as a strategic tool to highlight the important parts of your visual. The use of color should always be an intentional decision. Never let your tool make this important decision for you!

See your graphs and slides through colorblind eyes