Crafting Visual
Stories with Data
Amit Kapoor
amitkaps.com
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War Stories &
Killer Charts
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analysis
numbers
argument
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Humans are
pattern-seeking
story-telling
animals.
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analysis Synthesis
numbers Visuals
argument Story
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Visualisation
Storytelling
Visual Data Stories
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Visualisation
Storytelling
Visual Data Stories
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What is visualisation?
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How many ways can you visualise this data table?
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Visualisation is the transformation of the
symbolic into geometric.
McCormick et al.
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Learning to See
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Visualisation is the use of computer-
generated, interactive, visual
representations of abstract data to
amplify cognition.
Card, Mackinlay, & Shneiderman
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How do we use
visualisation to amplify
cognition?
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Visualization gives you answers to
questions you didn't know you had.
Ben Schneiderman
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Who & What: Distribution1
1 Capabilities Premium
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How Many: Comparison2
2 Working Capital Profiler
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Where: Maps3
3 Wind Map
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When: Timeline4
4 New York Times
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How: Relationship5
5 Amit Kapoor
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Why: Deduction & Prediction6
6 Mike Bostock
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What is the role of
visualisation in the
analytics process?
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Refine: Data Validation7
7 Trifacta
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Explore: Freight Movement8
8 Amit Kapoor
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Model: Model Interpretation9
9 Fast Forward Labs
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Insight: Actionable Data 10
10 Data Vis at Uber
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Vis amplifies cognition
Vis answers question
Vis accelerates analytics
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Visualisation
Storytelling
Visual Data Stories
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The universe is made of
stories, not of atoms.
— Muriel Rukeyser
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What is storytelling?
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Rhetoric
Logos — Ethos — Pathos
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narrative | ˈ
nærətiv
noun: Any account of connected events, presented in a sequence
of written words or spoken words or (moving) pictures.
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Events that happen in
time
Linear Order
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Named people who have
to face decisions
Personal Decision
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A disruption of a state of
equilibrium
Change in Context
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A foregrounding of
human experience
Elevation - Human Emotion
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One human life, closely
observed, is everyone’s
life. In the particular is
the universal.
— Roger Ebert
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Story Mindset
In listening to stories we tend to suspend disbelief
in order to be entertained, whereas in evaluating
statistics we generally have an opposite inclination
to suspend belief in order not to be beguiled.
John Allen Paulos
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Stories are emotional
Stories are memorable
Stories are impactful
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Visualisation
Storytelling
Visual Data Stories
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Think Stories, Not Charts
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How can we craft visual-
data-stories?
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80% perspiration,
10% great idea,
10% output.
— Simon Rogers
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We’re bad at the why
questions, which are
often much more
interesting.
— Amanda Cox
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Bad Aesthetics
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Good Aesthetics
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Above all else,
do no harm
— Tufte
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Overview first,
then zoom & filter,
details on demand
— Ben Schniederman
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Types of Transitions
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Meaningful Annotation
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Powerful Narration
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There's always room for a
story that can transport
people to another place.
— J.K. Rowling
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More Linear, More Storylike
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Guide the audience
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All stories are indeed
structures, but all the
best stories are brittle
structures.
— Tadhg Kelly
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Navigation
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Staging & Animation
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Ensure the interactivity
has Affordance. To afford
means "to give a clue"
— Dan Norman
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Visualisation
Storytelling
Visual Data Stories
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Data is just a clue to the
end truth
— Josh Smith
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See the world through a
data lens
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Aesthetics is deeply
associated with emotions
and feelings
— Giorgio Lupi
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Create beautiful
aesthetics
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The data is just part of
the story.
— Jonathan Harris