Data Storytelling

On 14 July 2016, I wrote a blog Data tells you what’s happening. Stories tell you why it matters with the following featured image. Today, as I look back I can see how I was wrong to use an image that speaks about data being less than stories. In my storytelling work, I have always witnessed a war between stories and data,…

We want to introduce a change in our organisation, we put together a powerpoint with charts, graphs, reasons and benefits. When we finished our presentation everyone in the room has all the information and knowledge. They might even agree but would they change? Perhaps not. Carmine Gallo in his Forbes article elaborates this point,  Big numbers rarely spark action, but a sea…

Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes – The Joy of State – BBC Four video published in November 2010 is still one of my favourite examples of Data Storytelling. Many credit data visualisation and technology used for this amazing video but in my view the beating heart of this fantastic data storytelling video is Hans Rosling’s ability to storytell. I…

I am conducting a Data Storytelling Workshop for finance professionals who works at a MNC. Their slides are filled with information, so much information that it feels to me like a Slideument (Slide + Document). When asked, “Why do you have so much information on a slide that you are presenting?”, their response was, “It’s a template that I have to follow.”…

Sam and his team, having worked hard to find an insight from data that they have received from their ecommerce team, finally find a meaningful insight after weeks of slicing and dicing the data. Excited, they walk in to a presentation to share the insight. Their presentation is structured like this: – We are here to make the following suggestions for an…

Words have always been the most natural way to tell stories. However, the rising importance of data has created a new need for us, which is to tell a story with numbers. Something that doesn’t come naturally to us. We have always presented an analysis of numbers. Hence, we are great at analysing the data but not so great at being able…

As I am doing more and more work on Data Storytelling, I am coming across examples that are demonstrative of the fact that our ability to data storytell is still at its embryonic stages. There are simple things that we agree with in theory but fail to apply. Here are some slides I have worked with that demonstrate my point. Now, as…