Data Storytelling for Business: Audience
Last week, I attended a two day session on data storytelling and I can say that I really was on full geek mode. I'm a digital marketer and I deal with campaign analytics on a daily basis. My 'classmates' were from different Intelligent Operations teams and I am still very amazed on how analytics is measured and interpreted on different businesses of Accenture. I feel that this is the primary reason why data science is now a hot skill. Now more than ever, it is not enough to capture data, organizations need to use their data to their advantage by making insight driven decisions. Data storytelling moved from "good to have" to "must have" skill because this is now the main advantage to pivot to the new.
I want to do a blog series about my key takeaways from the sessions. I was inspired by CIO workshop blog that I visit for tips and tricks. I hope that through my blog, I can help people improve on how they tell stories using data.
Let's start with the basics. There are 4 keys to data storytelling: Audience, Data, Visuals and Narrative. This blog post will focus on "Audience".
#1. Who is the audience of your report? Who will read it? From there you can consider the language and level of information to be presented. Is it a leadership or technical report? These two audience have different metrics relevant to their roles and business knowledge.
#2. What is the big takeaway? When people look at graphs or charts, audience should be enabled to "focus on the big takeaway". It should be made clear why they are looking at it. What is the message that you want to say? What is the action that you want them to take?
When you look at this chart, what will be your takeaway? It will be interesting to know how other people interpret this chart. Please leave a comment below :)
- If I look on YTD data: 54 out 71 or of 76% of planned content were published in FY19 to date
- If I focus on the latest month: In May, 5 our of 7 or 71% of planned content were published
- If I look for a trend: Planned content decreased in Q3 or the average published content is 6
Start the chart makeover
- Define your audience as (who) the marketing lead who wants to monitor (what) the latest report on blog calendar. *What is important information for the marketing lead? The status of planned vs published blogs in May, the latest month.
Take advantage of the "chart title" to give the main takeaway. Instead of generic "blog report", display the main idea "what is the status of planned vs published blogs in May".
2. Apply the concepts of Ranking of Perceptual tasks by Cleveland and McGill. In simple language, graphs that have a common scale is most understandable while those with volume (say goodbye to 3Ds) and/or uses colors incorrectly are confusing rather than helping people.
spelling "length" and "strength" is always tricky, apologies for the typo
Work in progress chart is currently using common scale so no action needed. Data viz hack #1 label the data OR keep Y-axis. I decided to label the data.
3. Apply the concepts of Gestalt laws of Perception.
People sees objects as belonging in groups because of the "cues" mentioned above
To apply law of proximity, move the legends near the graphs. To apply law of similarity, use color to highlight the key message. Data viz hack #2 if x-axis moves in time, use a line chart.
Is the improved graph more intuitive to the targeted audience? What do you think?