The "iz" in Data Viz
Today, I attended a workshop given by Rebecca Conroy and Duncan Swain, creative partners at Information is Beautiful and former British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) journalists. If you are not familiar with Information is Beautiful, definitely check out their website http://iibstudio.com and their sister site http://www.informationisbeautiful.net. They are known for doing unbelievably gorgeous data visualizations and using those visualizations to tell a story.
http://iibstudio.com Financial Times Graphic World
http://iibstudio.com Space Race
The most valuable part of the workshop in my opinion was learning about the process of data storytelling. The process was outlined in five (5) steps:
If you have a concept, conducting research is crucial to ensure that the data you are using is reliable, trustworthy, and conveys your story accurately. Whatever the piece, put your data into a spreadsheet (it's easy to do) which will allow you to organize your information and structure your piece.
Before you design and build your visualization, sketch it on paper analog-style. Make sure your concept includes:
- A brief summary of the infographic or data viz (2-3 sentences).
A title (A working title is ok at this point in the process).
As you move into the design and build phase, keep referring back to your sketch as you create the data viz.
This workshop was particularly relevant for us in our current project as we are taking an already existing dataset and creating a story around it. For our team, the biggest challenge so far has been finding the story within the data.
The Information is Beautiful team emphasized that the key to data storytelling is to ask yourself three (3) main focus questions:
- What is your story?
- What is your goal? (i.e. Are you changing behavior? looking for outliers? etc...)
- What is the key information you want to convey?
One thing I learned during this workshop is that you must become intimately acquainted with your dataset. In other words, "Become one with the data." By doing this, your story will come.