Telling Stories with Data Visualizations

Alison Blaine

NCSU Libraries

ablaine@ncsu.edu

Who I am

  • librarian
  • teach workshops on data viz
  • D.H. Hill Library
  • I <3 consultations

  • photo by Thegreenj

Goals

  • help you get better grades, land a great job, and have a happy life
  • teach you how to make better data visualizations
  • that's it

Today's Talk:

How to tell a story with your data visualization

(OK. So what types of stories are there?)

Story types

see handout!

  • the most interesting point story. (don't eat red #3)
  • the correlation story - how 2 things relate (diapers/beer)
  • the comparison story (noise level inside sports arenas)
  • the change over time story (E-cigarette use among teens since 2011)
  • the human interest/real life connection story

Activity

  1. Summarize the main story of each chart.
  2. Identify the type of story being told.
  3. What improvements are needed to better communicate the story?


Discuss with your neighbors in small groups

Source: Wall Street Journal

Consider Accessibility

Source: Randy Olsen

Simplify

Source: Randy Olsen

Source: FiveThirtyEight

Graph should stand alone

& not require reading the fine print/text of a document

Annotation makes it better

Meh.

Source: Cole Nussbaum, Storytelling with Data

What is a potential story that's hiding here?

Source: Cole Nussbaum, Storytelling with Data

What design fixes enabled the telling of a story?

Source: Cole Nussbaum, Storytelling with Data

They Tried, But...

Source: Huffington Post

Highlight what is important

Source: Bloomberg

Finding the Story in Your Data

Speed Data-ing

Find a story to tell about this data

  • Figure out what the data is about
  • Find a story in the data (interesting message or angle)
  • What audience might find your story interesting?

    • Source: EMSI / Tableau sample data sets

Visualizing Your Data Story

Choosing a Chart Type

for future reference

www.datavizcatalogue.com

Mediocre at Best

Can we do better than this??

Source

Download "millenialjobs.xls" data set at go.ncsu.edu/mil

Open millenialjobs.xls in Tableau

Add labels

Add title and reference line

Create a dashboard to add annotation & highlighting

Label reference line and add other annotations

Move legend and save to Tableau Public

Remember 5 things:

  1. Annotate your charts to communicate what you want people to know
  2. Highlight what is important -- color can help with this
  3. Label information close to the data points
  4. Use titles to help tell the story
  5. Your graph should stand alone

Thanks!

ablaine@ncsu.edu