Are You Able To Tell Stories With Data?

Abstract

During our first education years, at the school, even at the high school, we learnt very much about many different subjects. However, in most cases, an important ability for our professional future is missed: how to create and tell stories with data and numbers. This lack of information has produced a big problem: users have access to a large amount of information, due to the current technological advances, but they are unable efficiently use data to tell stories, which is key to convert them into relevant information.

In this paper, we present a study we performed with master students aimed at improving their data visualization skills. We divided this study into several stages. Firstly, the students learn by accomplishing different tasks following a clear path divided into these sections: analysis of the audience, selecting the appropriate visuals, simplification, focus, communication with data, storytelling, and final visuals.

Every task was presented in a visual and natural way, with different options, where the students should choose the correct answers, from a clear and objective point of view. All the tasks are part of a global questionnaire, which was carried out by the students so that they prove their competence in telling effective stories with numbers and data.

The results shown clear lacks in different tasks such a simplification and communication with data, where most of students didn’t correctly answer the questions.

As a conclusion, we can claim that more effort must be done in setting a clear objective in the visual communication field. In particular, simplifying data, focusing on the important part of the message to the audience, and also in the way and shape that data are presented.