Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic

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.

Sometimes bar charts are avoided because they are common. This is a mistake. Rather, bar charts should be leveraged because they are common, as this means less of a learning curve for your audience.

Humans’ brains have a finite amount of this mental processing power. As designers of information, we want to be smart about how we use our audience’s brain power.

When design is thoughtful, it fades into the background so that your audience doesn’t even notice it.

Studies have shown that we have about 3–8 seconds with our audience, during which time they decide whether to continue to look at what we’ve put in front of them or direct their attention to something else.

At a fundamental level, a story expresses how and why life changes. Stories start with balance.

Story is what ties together information, giving our presentation or communication a framework for our audience to follow.