# How to Connect with Your Audience Through Data Stories

## Метаданные

- **Канал:** sqlbelle
- **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvnkeguUgMs
- **Дата:** 26.05.2024
- **Длительность:** 12:22
- **Просмотры:** 4,134

## Описание

In this lesson, we dive into data storytelling and creating effective visuals. 

As data professionals, we often have a lot of data and need to find hidden insights. 

But how do we turn those findings into a story our audience can understand? 

This video will provide tips on how to create compelling data stories and pick the right visuals.

--
This video is one of the modules in a bigger course on data visualization best practices, which I co-created with Data Governance expert George Firican. 

Data Visualization for Data Storytelling
https://www.lightsondata.com/data-visualization-for-data-storytelling-course/

## Содержание

### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvnkeguUgMs) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00)

in this lesson we'll talk about the general considerations we should think about when we are creating our data story and when we're creating the visuals that complement our data story as professionals who work with data we are often given a lot of data and we are tasked to answer some questions find Opportunities find any hidden insights about the data and data storytelling is about creating that narrative it's piecing together some of the insights that we discover so that our audience will see what we see and they get to know what we discovered about the data and we know this is important because sometimes these discoveries can influence decisions and they can even change the course of an organization's Direction what we are essentially saying though is that data storytelling is all about effective communication let's break this down a little bit there are three main components needed for effective communication to occur at the center C of it is a message it's our narrative this is what needs to be conveyed from sender to receiver and we also need to note that if any of these components fail effective communication does not occur after analyzing the data we probably have some insights and some understanding about that data that nobody else sees yet and that will help us shape our narrative but we also need to be very intentional about what we're going to include in this narrative we don't want to add any details or anything else that might clutter or confuse the story we as senders we also have control over how we deliver this message we have control over which visuals which charts we're going to use to complement our message we can also choose the language the tone the medium that we're going to use to convey our data story now the third component that is needed for effective communication to happen we don't have a lot of control over that we cannot control if the receiver will choose to receive the message or reject the message however while we cannot cater to every type of audience we can make deliberate efforts to maximize the chances of our message or our story being received whatever our message is or whoever our audience is we need to make sure that there's some kind of alignment that the message is something that is useful to them relevant to them or interesting to them and we have to be able to deliver it in a manner that they can appreciate and accept now for this to happen we need to know what they need we need to get to know our audience a little bit what problems are we trying to solve for them what opportunities are we presenting to them we need to be able to connect to our audience somehow if for example we are targeting a wide reach of audiences different groups of audiences this means there's more variability different back backgrounds different skill levels different understanding different expertise different levels of appreciation so in some ways we need to find what that common ground is how do we talk to them in a way that allows us to connect to majority of them in some ways this communication has to feel specific and personal in order to make that connection we have to shape our story in a way that it feels like it is catered to them if there are any barriers to establishing effective communication we need to identify what those are we need to prevent them from happening if we can but we also need to accept the fact that there will be times when even if the message is right the sender has chosen the right Avenue and tone to deliver and we've done our best sometimes there will be just refusal to accept and it could be for any reason so we just need to know that this is a possibility this can happen and this does happen so how can we make sure that we craft our message in our data story so it can reach our target audience this involves a series of decisions and with each decision there's going to be tradeoffs it's going to be a balancing act there will be a lot of compromises or a series of balancing acts and compromises for example we may choose a chart even if personally we think a different kind of chart is better but you know your audience can appre appreciate and understands this other chart better so that is a compromise that is a decision that you may need to make whatever decisions we make there will always be pros and cons and there will be risks and benefits we just need to be aware what those are so let's just try to remember we have some control over our message and how we deliver that message and while we don't have any control over our audience we can be aware of the considerations that can help increase acceptance and

### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvnkeguUgMs&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00)

adoption so in this module we're really going to look at our audience and these balancing acts what tradeoffs do we usually face depending on our audience one thing I should note and this is just based on experience we should not impose what we think is best practice just because we think the best visualization should be a bar chart does not mean we should impose it if that's not how the audience can appreciate and use the insights we provide for example if your audience or your stakeholders are used to seeing pie charts simply telling them it's bad practice will not help adoption if people are used to looking at data one way we cannot simply take that method away or yank it away and expect that they will appreciate this new way that we are introducing to them if we take away something that they find Value in or if we tell our audience that they're doing it the wrong way that can lead to resentment and rejection so we need to make sure that we take care of how we deliver this message and based on experience when people and culture are ready for change they will embrace the change but sometimes it takes time it also takes awareness and a little bit of handholding from people who are more aware about the benefits of seeing things a new way we need to keep our audience top of mind if we want effective communication to happen so let's go through some other considerations that can help us maximize the reception of our message and data story we don't have full control over any or all of these but awareness of these considerations can go a long way first is convention and openness second is all about background and use of jargon third is about the need for precision fourth is about the presentation medium and fifth is about the time that our audience has to look at our visuals in our data story and how we can potentially incorporate interactivity in our data story let's talk about convention and openness first convention is typically the way something is usually done and conventions are great because they reduce that learning curve it means that we don't have to reintroduce Concepts because people are already aware of them so if the convention and familiarity let's say is about pie charts we should consider that we know pie charts can be hard to read especially without label or especially if you have too many slices but if this is how your audience is used to receiving data we can still present pie charts and slowly try to introduce different ways of seeing the same information in a different chart we can start having conversations of why perhaps a bar chart might be a little bit different a little bit better and even if sometimes they're already using effective charts but you know there is another chart that can be used that will give them different kinds of insights again we can gauge when they are ready to receive this and we can potentially have those conversations about how different charts can give you different insights I think the other thing we need to remember is that the charts that we produce that complement our story they're not mutually exclusive just because we have a bar chart does not mean we shouldn't have a pie chart it is possible to have both different charts and different representations often tell different parts of the story and collectively they can paint a more holistic picture of what's happening and collectively they can be more valuable and again we have to gauge our audien's openness to perhaps seeing things a new way we can't just impose what we think is best practice or a better chart because our data story really should be catering to our audience and not us we also need to gauge if our audience already has enough background information for us to tell the data story because sometimes that will influence our use of jargon or technical terms that might be very specific to a group let us take this Tableau public dashboard for example this dashboard was created by Zach guys and it's part of a sports viz Sunday visualization so in here the audience is really catered to people who are already familiar with basketball terms of people who are watching the NBA as we scroll around we can see jargon that is very specific to the NBA and if you're not aware of this port then you may not be able to glean any insights from this particular dashboard we also need to be aware of our audien's need for precision we know that with text tables we don't have that pre- attentive processing you require Focus to figure out what the patterns are is it good is it bad it's hard to glean any insights however our audience may need the exact numbers hence we should provide them with a text table and when they're ready we can

### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvnkeguUgMs&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 12:00)

start introducing different kinds of encoding but still present the actual numbers that they need to use so in this case we may start introducing a highlight table they still get their numbers but now you can see different kinds of insights that are popping up they may see value in this right away or the adoption might be slower but we cannot Rush adoption we also have a myriad of devices and this may help in form or shape the way we're going to visualize our data if we have big screen if we have high resolution if it's a wall display there's more we can show there's probably more we can do however for smaller devices we have to be aware that there's only so much that we can show and retain Clarity another big consideration especially for executive dashboards we need to know what our audiences need and how much time they have so for executive dat dashboards usually it's going to be very specific numbers right away Executives probably don't have a lot of time to look through that dashboard all the time so we want to surface the most important numbers the most important kpis right away now if they do have time or for different kinds of audiences we may introduce interactivity depending on the capabilities of our tools we can allow them to interact with our visuals allow them to ask additional questions and if they have a way to answer those questions any followon questions then it encourages that engagement and when we can introduce what we call a drill down capability allow them to discover data allow them to ask additional questions allow them to see insights and again eventually this will become an expectation and it's something that we need to anticipate data stories can be engaging data visualizations can help catapult that data story to new heights this has been done before and Hance rosling is one of those people who has put data in the center stage as a quote from the Ted Talk website enhance rosling's hands data sings and one of the most viewed videos is the best stats you've ever seen if you haven't seen this before I encourage you to watch this

---
*Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52859*