Bringing Data to Life: Emotions and Data Storytelling

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En provenance du cours de University of California, Davis

Creating Dashboards and Storytelling with Tableau

379 notes

University of California, Davis

Creating Dashboards and Storytelling with Tableau

379 notes

Cours 4 sur 5 dans Specialization Data Visualization with Tableau

Leveraging the visualizations you created in the previous course, Visual Analytics with Tableau, you will create dashboards that help you identify the story within your data, and you will discover how to use Storypoints to create a powerful story to leave a lasting impression with your audience. You will balance the goals of your stakeholders with the needs of your end-users, and be able to structure and organize your story for maximum impact. Throughout the course you will apply more advanced functions within Tableau, such as hierarchies, actions and parameters to guide user interactions. For your final project, you will create a compelling narrative to be delivered in a meeting, as a static report, or in an interactive display online.

À partir de la leçon

Tell the Story of Your Data

Welcome to Module 4. Although this course focuses on Tableau, we will look at a wider range of examples and techniques to help you become a better data storyteller. By the end of this module, you should be able to leverage concepts and techniques designed to help you become a more focused and compelling storyteller with data as the foundation. We will discuss ways to avoid unintentionally creating false narratives with good data. You will also learn about what neuroscience research tells us about stories, audience engagement, and decision drivers. You will use structural story elements to help improve the relatability of the story and explore ways design and textual elements can affect the emotional tone of a story. Lastly, you will learn how to frame and format the data story based on your design checklist. Let's get started!

Tell the Story of Your Data Introduction1:37

The Art of Storytelling (Past, Present, and Future)3:27

Storytelling and the Human Brain5:28

Bringing Data to Life: Emotions and Data Storytelling7:14

Emotion Modulators: Color, Language, and Other Design Elements8:24

Framing and Format4:11

Framing, Conventions, and Priming8:12

False Narratives and Data Storytelling6:51

Telling the Stories within the Story (Part 1)5:29

Telling the Stories within the Story (Part 2)4:45

Story Considerations6:27

Preparation of the Story Points11:07

Setting Up the Story14:24

Creating Points in the Story16:18

Interactive Story6:36

Create a Data Story in a Static Presentation20:20

Rencontrer les enseignants

Govind Acharya
Principal Analyst
Budget and Institutional Analysis
Hunter Whitney
Sr. Consultant, Author, Instructor
Design Strategy and Data Visualization

[MUSIC]

Designing for emotion is a balancing act.

Depending on the purpose and context, either too much or

too little emphasis on emotion can be tricky.

For a more exploratory or analytical visualization,

including emotionally charged content can be problematic.

There are several techniques for

heightening the emotional quality of a visualization,

ranging from the structuring of the story, to color, to word choices.

Let's face it, you're probably not going to get that much emotion from a bar chart.

We are going to consider a few examples of techniques

you can use to weave your emotion into your data story.

After this lesson, you will be able to explain techniques for

heightening the emotional quality of a visualization, and

discuss the balancing act of designing for emotions in data storytelling.

>> Hello, and welcome back.

In this lesson, we will consider techniques to design for emotions and

data storytelling.

Let's start with thinking about the structure of a story.

Now, one of my first jobs was as a freelance science journalist and

it taught me many lessons about connecting with audiences,

some of which I'd like to share with you now.

One of the most important is that, when you are conveying information to a general

audience, even if it's scientific or technical, and especially

if it's scientific or technical, try to make it relatable to the viewer.

That is, try to help viewers personally connect to the material you are presenting

by allowing them to identify with something within the story.

One of the best approaches to do that is to find a specific story

of a person who exemplifies the larger narrative

rather than starting with a lot of general facts and figures.

The rule of thumb could be put this way.

Use a particular to illuminate the general.

Consider this example.

Which of the following approaches will have a better chance of connecting and

resonating with a general audience?

Option A, home foreclosures have increased 20% in the US this year.

Or something more along the lines of this, option B.

Allison is worried about losing her home, and she's not alone.

So far this year, foreclosures have jumped 20% in the US.

By introducing Allison as a representative of the larger trend,

the data is put in a more relatable form.

In this case, the larger narrative can be partly told through

Allison's direct experience and perspective.

Let's look at this example as one basic version

of the story article with the 3 Cs.

Context, Allison is worried about losing her home.

Challenge, she's not alone.

There's an economic downturn and a national wave of foreclosures.

Conclusion, Allison was fortunate in her case

to renegotiate her mortgage with the bank.

Now, this type of approach, personify the Allison's character and

her story against the backdrop of the larger story, if replicated,

could help slow the foreclosure rate.

By telling Allison's story, you can help people identify and

connect to the larger narrative in way that just talking about percentages and

policies alone could never accomplish.

We will see examples of visualizations that show the individual

against the backdrop of a larger data set.

However, this approach can sometimes be a challenge for data storytelling.

Why do you think this would be the case?

Well, many data sets anonymize the individual data.

If that's the case, think about other ways to make the big picture more concrete and

relatable by finding particular details in the data that can help connect

the abstract to the more concrete in the viewer's experience.

Now, the human element does not only have to be in the story itself,

the presenter can also help put a human face on the data, and

encourage emotional connection to it without distorting the data in any way.

One very famous example of this is Hans Rosling and

his presentation with primarily a bubble chart visualization

of differences in global per capita, income, and life expectancy.

If you haven't seen it already, it's available in the resources section and

I recommend that you pause now to look at it before continuing with the rest

of this lesson.

Now for many people, global health data and statistics would be a recipe for

a boring presentation.

However, in this case, Rosling is a primary point of connection that

helps us to really enter into his data story.

Rosling's passion for the subject and

skill as a presenter gins up the emotional level.

But that's not all.

His interactions with the chart, which almost seem to have a life of its own,

along with the movement and colors, further enhanced the effect.

Now, not everyone can be a Hans Rosling, but

it can be useful to see what he does to make his case with data.

He tells the story about the changes in life expectancy and

income with a great deal of passion.

But that passion is leavened by weaving in hard data.

If either the passion or

the data was missing, the presentation would not work half as well.

When you are working on your stories,

you might ask yourself, do you care about the subject yourself?

And if not, what would get you to care about it?

The answer to that question could help propel the direction and emotional impact

of your story and your project, not only for yourself, but for others as well.

Other factors to consider for enhancing emotional resonance include

how to create some tension or uncertainty in your data stories.

Challenges, tension, and uncertainty are powerful ways to draw us into a story and

to help maintain our level of interest.

There's a reason why things like spoiler alerts for films and television exist.

We want to see how things unfold without always knowing

everything at the beginning.

After all, how boring would that be?

Well, the same is true for data stories.

An unexpected conclusion can have a powerful impact

on the audience's perception of your story.

That said, it may be that there are no surprising findings in your data.

Well, that's okay.

It might take a bit more work, but you can always look for ways to

keep your audience engaged by the way you bring them to the final conclusion.

Well, that wraps up our look at structural elements and emotion in story.

Our next lesson, we will consider how color, language, and

other design elements can also be used to modulate emotions.

Thanks for listening, and see you next time.

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