3 Questions To Help Tell Better Stories
This article is part of an ongoing series on telling better stories with data.
It's said that trying to get information from data is like having a cup of water from a firehose. More often than not, we are inundated with so much of data which makes it challenging to tell a compelling story to our audience, stakeholders or superiors.To truly make an impact through, we need to tell compelling stories with our data. To get started, here are three essential questions to ask yourself before creating any data visualisation or dashboard:
a) What do you want your audience to learn or do?
Your visualisation should have a clear learning objective or desired action. Are you trying to educate your audience about a trend, convince them of a particular viewpoint, or motivate them to take specific steps?
b) What decision or action should they be able to take?
Every data story should enable decision-making or action, rather than raise confusion. Consider what specific choices or actions your audience should be empowered to make after engaging with your visualisation.
c) What problem are you trying to solve?
This might be the most crucial question to answer. Finding the right problem to solve will help you identify the core issue or challenge that your data story addresses. This helps frame your visualisation in a way that resonates with your audience's needs and concerns.
By answering these questions, you can focus your efforts on creating compelling stories that drive real outcomes. For example, if your goal is to convince the marketing team to increase spending in a particular channel, your visualisation should clearly show the ROI of that channel compared to others. This targeted approach is far more effective than presenting a general overview of all marketing data.
To learn more about telling better data stories, join our WSQ Developing Data Narratives course.