Practical Tableau

Chapter 84. Introduction to Storytelling

So how exactly do you tell a data-driven “story”? I fear that storytelling in the context of data visualization has become a bit of a buzzword. What’s worse is the concept is often mentioned without practical examples of how you can apply storytelling techniques to data visualization. This section offers an introduction to storytelling and aims at providing several tangible tips for incorporating storytelling techniques into your data visualization. If the INSIGHT strategy described in Part IV is the key to taking your work from good to great; storytelling is the key to taking your data visualization from great to actionable: the “Holy Grail” of the profession.

Storytelling has been used in every culture as a means of engaging audiences and communicating everything from entertainment to moral values. Stories work because humans are wired to retain stories; not independent facts or statistics. In fact, after a presentation, 63% of attendees remember the stories presented, while just 5% of attendees remember the individual statistics.¹ This is particularly relevant to data, where business insights risk being lost amid a deluge of increasingly large sets of numbers. Think about what you remember after seeing an effective data visualization compared to a raw spreadsheet of numbers. The difference is inherent storytelling at work.

The parallels between data visualization and storytelling are undeniable. Much like stories, data storytelling includes ...