[MUSIC] Welcome, just as human beings are wired for visual perception, we're also wired for stories. Storytelling is an ancient and powerful tool for communicating ideas. Like any tool, it can do good or cause harm depending on how you as the designer use it. In this lesson, we'll learn how to leverage the power of storytelling in a positive way. After this lesson, you will be able to define what makes a good story. You will also be able to identify the potential pitfalls of storytelling and apply the three Cs of a basic story arc, let's get started. Hello and welcome. In many ways, data stories are the inverse of data analytics and require different approaches to be fully successful. While the kinds of visualization design for analytical work should generally be geared to support users in their explorations of a range of possibilities and patterns in the data to derive their own insights. Stories direct the audiences attention to a particular predetermined point or message. In previous courses, we learned a lot about design to support analytic work. Now let's enter the storytelling mode. We're going to review a few concepts including personas that we've encountered in prior courses about the design process. But now we're going to apply them in the context of data stories. Think of it like this. Supporting analytic work is like sending people into a forest with the best compass that you can devise. While storytelling is more akin to leading them along a previously marked out trail. In both cases, you should really understand the needs of these individuals, but the approaches you take to meet those needs are different. Now just as a human brain is wired for visual perception, it is also geared for stories. Knowing a little bit about how that works could help you assemble and present you data stories most effectively. What exactly is a story? It's something that seems obvious until you really start to think about it. There's a great quote from the master writer Flannery O'Connor who observed, I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. One foundational description of a story is something that has three core connected elements. A beginning state set up or context, then some challenge or conflict in the middle, and finally, a changed state, resolution, or payoff at the end. For short, let's call them the three Cs. One, context, two, challenge and three, conclusion. Stories are essentially focused accounts of change, and how, and why that happens. Another way to think about it is a line from a Tableau white paper entitled, Data Story Telling Using Visualization to Share the Human Impactive Numbers. Quote, data tells you what's happening, stories tell you why it matters, end quote. For example, this is a sample Tableau dashboard showing sales data for a super store. It's a snapshot of what's going on. And this is a partial story being created from the data with individual and narrative elements brought together into a single view organized by story points. Now, let's take that same proto-story and map it into a story arc. The context is overall, our profits look strong. The challenge is, but there are problems, perhaps stagnating sales, and what's going to meet those challenges? Maybe a new marketing campaign. What action? At this point, let's say we don't have our conclusion. But the conclusion will be something along the lines of we did x and the problem was resolved or perhaps, a problem wasn't. Now story arcs can include all kinds of additional subplots, steps, complications or permutations, but the fundamental structure is still essentially the same. What's so great about stories to communicate findings and data? For starters, there's some evidence stories can help people's comprehension and recall. They can provide important context and in certain cases, even foster empathy and emotional connection to the findings. Think about it. How would you compare getting an arbitrary list of facts and figures versus having those facts and figures related to you in a story? In essence, stories activate and engage more of our brain's capacity than simply looking at the numbers alone. Of course, like any powerful tool, there are potential pros and cons to using stories. I've mentioned a few pros already. The cons include distorting the data by truly meaningless patterns and false positives in what seems like good data. And it may be good data but there still may be false narratives inside of that. That is seeing potential stories in a pattern of data that leads to a false conclusion. In a prior course, I noted that our ancestors' very survival sometimes depended on the ability to detect visual patterns and take quick action. These days, people time and attention are in short supply, so being able to present a clear, concise, and accurate story is a crucial skill. That means you need to be highly selective in your choices of what to include and leave out of your stories. Just as you don't want a lot of visual clutter in your visualizations, you don't want to clutter up your stories with a lot of meandering and meaningless or potentially misleading details. We'll continue looking at this throughout the rest of this course. I look forward to seeing you again. Thanks, bye.
