Lecture 4: Storytelling and Visual Narratives

DSAN 5200-03: Advanced Data Visualization

Abhijit Dasgupta

abhijit.dasgupta

Jeff Jacobs

jj1088

Anderson Monken

aem303

Marck Vaisman

marck.vaisman

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Storytelling with Data

• Often, your jobs as a data scientist is to be an effective communicator

• There is more to communication than numbers on a paper

Data stories appear to be most effective when they have constrained interaction at various checkpoints within a narrative, allowing the user to explore the data without veering too far from the intended narrative.

What is Data Storytelling?

https://venngage.com/blog/data-storytelling/

Components of a data story

Storytelling is abstract

It is not merely:

• a technical matter of creating an image

• designing the right chart

Rather it is:

• the broader considerations that impact nearly every decision you make in the way you frame and present a project

The story is the culmination of distilling the information and insights gathered through the analytic process

It is often represented by a series of well chosen and developed visualization, but these visualizations reflect intentional design choices based on your understanding of the data, the story and your audience

Telling Your Data Story

Story components

To tell a story you have to define a story

A story is how what happens affects someone who is trying to achieve what turns out to be a difficult goal, and how they change as a result

1. Plot: how the story unfolds
2. Protagonist: the main character
3. Problem: a difficult goal for the protagonist to achieve
4. Transformation - the “so what?”: how the protagonist changes as a result

Story linearity

• Whether driven by time or logic, stories are typically is linear

• Beginning, middle and end

Every story is linear, with a well-defined beginning, middle and end. However, those pieces don’t have to take equal time.

Stories have pacing, which creates tension and interest, and makes the storytelling more compelling.

Traditional vs. Data Stories

^source

Aristotle vs. Brecht

• Sometimes you don’t want to “resolve” the tension!
• Aristotelian drama: audience goes home “satisfied”
  • The story is wrapped up, all of the loose ends are tied up, and everything resolves (whether in a happy or sad ending)
• Brechtian drama: audience is left with discomfort, ambiguity, unresolved tension
  • Sounds like something you wouldn’t want to do (and you don’t, in many cases), but sometimes can be more effective for spurning people to action!

Common visual narrative Genres

Standard Infographics

• An infographic is a collection of imagery, data visualizations, and minimal text that gives an easy-to-understand overview of a topic.
  

Data Infographics

• Data infographics are infographics that rely entirely or mostly on numbers to tell the story. This often includes data viz, such as charts and graphs, but not always.
  

Research posters

• Even research poster construction requires a narrative flow!

Scientific papers structure

Developing knowledge content

Bill Shander talks about different levels of content engagement. We’ll describe these in the next few slides

Primary communication tools

Engagement levels-1

Engagement levels-2

Storytelling tips

Author vs reader driven

Repetition and Redundancy

The old adage on how to present anything:

• Tell them what you are going to tell them
• Then tell them
• Then tell them what you just told them

Awesome data driven viz narratives

• The New York Times
• Wall Stree Journal
• The Washington Post
• FiveThirtyEight
• The Economist
• Financial Times
• The Pudding

The Pudding’s process:

By Ilia Blinderman

1. Storytelling is complicated
2. Who is your audience
3. Focus broadly or narrowly
4. Complexity of the finding after analysis
5. Progressing through the arguments
6. Arriving at the conclusion

Resources

https://pudding.cool/process/how-to-make-dope-shit-part-1/

https://pudding.cool/process/how-to-make-dope-shit-part-2/

https://pudding.cool/process/how-to-make-dope-shit-part-3/

Scrollytelling (Bill Shander)

https://medium.com/nightingale/the-past-present-and-future-of-scrollytelling-10dd37dc1003

https://medium.com/nightingale/from-storytelling-to-scrollytelling-a-short-introduction-and-beyond-fbda32066964

https://medium.com/@billshander/how-to-tell-stories-and-weave-a-cohesive-narrative-with-data-a56dea3d1d67

Other resources and examples

https://opensourcelibs.com/lib/rolldown

https://elementor.com/blog/guide-to-scrollytelling/

https://www.visualstorytell.com/blog/what-is-visual-storytelling

https://mathisonian.github.io/idyll/scaffolding-interactives/

https://idl.cs.washington.edu/

https://distill.pub/2020/communicating-with-interactive-articles/

Break

Let’s take a 10 minute break before moving onto the lab.