Data driven storytelling - Dr Benjamin Hennig - Jisc Digital Festival 2014
Data Driven Storytelling
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Human brains are wired for storytelling. Stories are how we imagine possibilities, encode our values, and teach lessons to the next generation. Stories impart facts, opinions, judgements, and emotions. Stories have a unique power to both inform and pursuade. We'll briefly explore the elements of a good story, then dive into a number of ways to use data to tell compelling stories. From simple infographics, to interactive data visualizaions, from basic tools like Excel to more sophistitacted data mining tools -- the toolkit is large and expanding rapidly. Finally we'll bring things back to the Drupal site you've already got, or the one you're working on, or planning. We'll explore a variety of modules, tools and techniques you can use to leverage the power and extensibility of Drupal to make it a first-class platform for data-driven storytelling. “If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.” ― Rudyard Kipling “The universe is not made of atoms, it is made of stories.” ― Muriel Rukeyser
Transcript of Data Driven Storytelling
What is Data Visualization?
• The visual representation of data
• "information that has been abstracted in some form"
Data Driven Storytelling
• Using data to tell a story
• Why?
– People are visual
– Humans are wired for storytelling
• There are 5 important things to consider
5 Things to Consider
1. Your data
2. Your data
3. Your data
4. Your data
5. Your data
5 Things to Consider
1. Your story
2. Your story
3. Your story
4. Your story
5. Your story
5 Things to Consider
1. Your story
2. Your data
3. Your audience
4. Your skillz
5. Your stage
1. Your Story
• What is your story?
– People don’t care about your numbers, they care about what
your numbers represent
• Is it a simple story? A complex story?
• Are there different interpretations?
– Do you want people to explore and come to their own
conclusions?
– Do you have one message you want them to take away?
Storytelling According To Tolstoy
“All great literature is one of two
stories; a man goes on a journey, or a
stranger comes to town”
Storytelling according to Pixar
Google “Pixar’s rules of storytelling.” There are 22 of them.
#4, aka the Story Spine (Kenn Adams)
Once upon a time there was ______. Every day, _________.
One day, _________. Because of that, ___________. Because of
that___________. Until finally, _____________.
Elements of a good story
• Setting
– Where are we, and why are we here?
• Character
– Protagonists & Antagonists
– Conflict & Potential
• Plot
– Backstory, Action, Resolution
• Detail
– Detail, not digression
Exercises
• Identify the elements in your favorite story
• Identify the elements in an effective campaign
– advertising, awareness, fundraising, advocacy
– tv, print, online
• Identify the elements in your story
2. Your Data
• What do you have?
• What can you get?
• How is it stored?
• Does it need to be processed?
• How often does it need to be updated?
• Do you want to/need to share your data?
3. Your Audience
• What's their familiarity with your subject matter?
• What's their expectation of the effort involved to
understand your story?
• What's the context in which they're interacting with your
story?
• Can you equip your audience to retell your story to
others?
– Is it your story, or theirs?
4. Your Skillz
• APIs, NoSQL, JSON, SVG, FLOT, oh my...
• Right Brain vs. Left Brain
• What can you realistically pull off?
• Are you doing this yourself or can you call for backup?
5. Your Stage
• Online
– Your website
– Social Media
– Embedding your data on other websites
– Mobile
– Are you printing, or are your readers?
• Can you increase your impact by using multiple channels?
TYPES OF VISUALIZATIONS
I heard you liked examples
A few types of visualizations
Charts http://viz.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/gbd-compare/
Maps http://pooreconomics.com/data/country/home
Infographic http://visual.ly/heartbleed-checklist
Interactive http://foods.bridgingthegapresearch.org
Immersive Presentation http://rwjf.org/maketobaccohistory?cid=xtw_pubhealth
TOOLS
How do I get me some of that?
Data Processing
• Anything but Drupal
bash ftw
$ cat page_map.csv | grep "^http://domain.com"| cut
-f1 | sort | uniq -c | cut -f5 -d\/ | sort | uniq -c
|sort -nr | head -25 | tr -s " " "\t" > level1.txt
Directory Pages
news 1343
chs 833
fhs 699
cd 513
cancer 251
flu 110
Lots of Presentation Options
• Server-generated images
• HTML
• JavaScript (d3js, c3js, Raphael, Google Charts)
• Canvas
• Flash (just kidding)
• Convince Views to export JSON
– views data export, views datasource, views JSON, drupal_json_output()
– D8 will use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\JsonResponse
• Don’t forget Mobile
d3js turns JSON into pretty
IN CONCLUSION
Hang on, I’m almost done
Get Your DataViz Out There in Ten Easy Steps
1. Gather the data
2. Process the data (Filter, sort, pre-compute, cluster, correlate, etc.)
3. Select a presentation style (Classic, funky, map, infographic; interactive vs static)
4. Select a tool (Off the shelf? Custom built?)
5. Load the data
6. Make it beautiful
7. Test it and make it better
8. Release it & promote it
9. Keep the data updated (Daily? Yearly? Real-time?)
10. Impact the world
Resources
October 14, 2014
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/courses
(Apologies to Mr. Tufte for my use of PowerPoint)
Resources
• Worth a Thousand Words: How to Display Health Data
• http://www.chcf.org/publications/2014/02/worth-thousand-
words-data
• For nonprofit/foundation types:
• http://dataanalystsforsocialgood.com/
• http://www.nten.org/research/collected-voices-data-informed-
nonprofits
• #npdata on Twitter
WORKSHOP
Is he going to make us talk?
Workshop
1. What story does your company or organization need to
tell?
2. Who are you trying to reach with this story?
3. What data lies behind this story?
How could this organization use data
visualization to tell this story?
