what your audience really wants


Today’s post is a makeover-focused one, based on a graph I recently encountered. I’ll illustrate how to improve this less-than-stellar graph using the entire holistic SWD process taught in the best-selling book:

  • understanding the context

  • choosing an effective visual

  • eliminating clutter

  • focusing attention strategically

  • telling a compelling data story

By working through real-world examples, such as the one we’ll talk about today, you can practice applying this process, and become more confident when incorporating similar changes and strategies into your own work.

Consider the following visual from a national retailer, showing warehouse performance. The details have been modified (to protect client confidentiality) but the spirit of the original remains the same.

When critiquing someone else’s work—particularly when it’s been removed from its original context as it is here—it’s always helpful to start by assessing what was done well.

  • Visual choice: I’m familiar with a bar chart, including the specific variation shown here, the 100% stacked bar, so I’m not faced with the hurdle of trying to decide how to decipher an uncommon visual type. With some modifications (which we’ll get into later), this visual type should work well to explain the main message of this communication: the breakdown of performance (accurate vs inaccurate rates) across the warehouses of interest.

  • Words: I also appreciate the helpful context included at the top of the visual stating the data source, as of date, why this subset of data is shown, and the overall picture of 85% accuracy. 

That said, there are many ways we can improve upon this visual to tell a concise and action-inspired data story. I’ll outline the changes I’d recommend and my rationale for each. 

the quick hits: declutter, focus and words

A few simple things go a long way without a ton of effort and time. The biggest bangs for your data storytelling buck are typically eliminating clutter, using color intentionally, and clarifying the intended takeaway with words.

I can improve upon the original by making the following changes:

  1. Use a different color palette. There is a positive/negative connotation to this data, so I’ll elect to use blue to signal the positive (accurate) and orange, its complement on the color wheel, to accentuate the negative (errors).

  2. Declutter. The original graph has many elements that make it appear more complicated to process than it really is, like gridlines, harsh bolding, rotated x-axis labels, and an out-of-place legend. I’ll declutter, leaving only those elements that add enough value to make up for their presence.

  3. Use words more effectively. If I want my audience to understand that this data is conveying a success story, I shouldn’t assume that they will come to that conclusion on their own. I’ll not only state it in words, but tie the words to the data they describe using similarity of color. 

You can see all of these changes applied in the visual below.

Check out the difference already!

While this is certainly an improvement over the original, we can continue to iterate and develop an even more effective final product. 

rotate the graph horizontally

As already mentioned, I like the choice of 100% stacked bar to show the relative percentages. I have two baselines for comparison: with one at the 100% value along the top and one at the 0% value along the bottom, I can be thoughtful about which series to place along these baselines to enable an easier visual comparison. 

One change I’d recommend is to rotate to a horizontal orientation, as shown below. I’ve intentionally removed color here to keep the emphasis on the choice of graph. In the case where we had longer category names, this orientation would allow for more space to spell out the entire name without rotating labels. You can read more about horizontal vs vertical bars in this prior post.

consider how the graph will be consumed 

When you’re with your audience—whether virtually or in-person—your graphs and presentation slides can include less context and detail physically written down or shown, because you are there to fill in any blanks. The reverse is true for written communications, where people have a higher tolerance (and perhaps demand) for more detail. This is why live presentations are better suited for sparse slides than written communications.

Check out how the same presentation might look different if we were delivering it live with a series of slides, versus sending around a single summarized view for people to read on their own:

Now let’s pull it all together.

don’t just show data, tell a story!

Watch my live presentation—and more discussion on how to build your data storytelling muscle—in the replay from a recent live chat on our YouTube channel:

An effective data story doesn’t just happen. Getting comfortable applying all the components considering the context, choosing a visual type, intentional design and creating a story takes time and practice. But it is worth the effort, because any communication is likely to be more effective when we move beyond simply showing data, and instead take intentional steps to inspire and drive action.

This is what your audience wants from you.


If interested, you can download the data and create your own makeover version in the exercise bring the data to life. For more examples of visual transformations, check out the before-and-afters in our makeover gallery.

dogfood with data

My husband and I were watching TV one evening last week. One commercial caught my attention. It was a commercial for Eukanuba dog food. I do not have a dog. Still, there was something about the combination of music and video and text with a bit of data that left an impression. I find this commercial to be an excellent example of storytelling with data.

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lead with story

When asked to write a guest blog post for this month's focus on storytelling on the Tableau Public Blog, I spent some time reflecting: if I had just a single lesson to share, what's the #1 piece of advice I'd give in this space? I'd boil it down to three simple words: lead with story. The following is the guest post I authored.

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storyboarding

In this series of posts, the focus is on concepts you can leverage at the onset of the communication process (when you know what you want to communicate, but before you've actually started crafting the communication itself). Previously, we've covered the 3-minute story and the Big Idea.

Today, we'll focus on storyboarding.

Storyboarding is perhaps the single most important thing you can do up front to ensure the communication you're crafting is on point. The storyboard establishes a structure for your communication. It's basically an outline. It can be subject to change as you work through the details, but establishing a structure at the onset will set you up for success. When you can (and as makes sense), get buy-in from your client or stakeholder at this step. It will help ensure what you're planning is in line with the need and reduce downstream iterations.

My #1 tip for storyboarding is: don't start with your presentation software. It's too easy to go into slide-creating-mode without thinking about how the pieces fit together and end up with a massive deck that says nothing effectively. I highly recommend going low tech here: leverage a whiteboard, post-it notes, or plain old paper. Personally, I like using post-it notes when I storyboard, because you can rearrange (and add and remove) the pieces easily and explore different narrative flows.

In prior posts, I've used the example of the summer learning program on science. If we're storyboarding this communication, it might look something like the following:

Note that in this case, the Big Idea is at the end. Perhaps we'd want to consider leading with that to ensure our audience doesn't miss the main point, and to help set up why we're communicating to them and why they should care in the first place.

In my opinion, the communication process (whether you're communicating with data or otherwise) shouldn't start with the creation of the communication. Rather, it should start with reflection on the context. Who are you communicating to? What do you need them to know or do? Once you've answered those questions, leverage the 3-minute storyBig Idea, and storyboarding to set yourself up for success when crafting your communication and delivering your message.

what's the Big Idea?

In my last post, I discussed the 3-minute story and the importance of being able to concisely describe what it is you want to communicate (without reliance on your data and/or visuals). Today, we'll cover an even higher level aggregation: the Big Idea.

The Big Idea boils down the "so-what" of your overall communication even further: to a single sentence. This is a concept that Nancy Duarte discusses in her book, Resonate. She says the Big Idea has three components:

  1. It must articulate your unique point of view;
  2. It must convey what's at stake; and
  3. It must be a complete sentence.

In my prior post, I shared the example of a summer learning program on science and what the 3-minute story could sound like. If we condense that even further to the Big Idea, it might be:

The pilot summer learning program aimed at improving students' perception of science was successful and, because of the success, we recommend continuing to offer it going forward; please approve our budget for this program.

Bam. It's clear to your audience what they need to know and what you are asking of them. Some people think being verbose helps convince an audience of your knowledge on a subject, but this often has the opposite effect. It's difficult to be concise, but when you master it, it can work as evidence to your audience that you really know what you're talking about, because you know what's not essential and can boil your message down to its core.

In my experience, the entire resulting communication is better when the person delivering it has taken the time to be really clear on and made sure they can articulate the Big Idea. Note that if your communication medium is slides, each slide should have a clear Big Idea. Then there should also be an overarching Big Idea for the overall communication.

Stay tuned for the next post in this series on storyboarding.

the 3-minute story

In my workshops, the very first lesson we typically cover is on the importance of context. When you have some information you want to communicate, there are a few things that it's helpful to think about before you begin the data visualization process.

As part of this lesson, we discuss three concepts that I recommend employing for success when it comes to creating a communication - note that these apply equally well whether you're communicating data or communicating in general -

  1. the 3-minute story;
  2. the Big Idea; and
  3. storyboarding.

I'll cover each of these in a little detail in this and upcoming posts. 

the 3-minute story

The 3-minute story is exactly what it sounds like: If you had only three minutes to tell your audience what they need to know: what would that sound like? This is a great way to ensure you are clear on and can articulate the story you want to tell. Being able to do this removes you from dependence on your slides or visuals for a presentation. This can be useful in the situation where your boss unexpectedly asks you what you're working on, or if you find yourself in an elevator with one of your stakeholders and want to give them the quick rundown or get their feedback. Or in the situation when you are watching your time on the agenda wane as others go over their allotted time...from the initial 30 minutes, to 20, to 10, to 5... If you know exactly what it is you want to communicate, you can make it fit the time slot you're given, even if it isn't the one you planned for.

Let's consider an example 3-minute story. Imagine that I am a 4th grade teacher:

A group of us in the science department were brainstorming last year - it seems by the time kids get to their first science class in the 4th grade, they come in with this attitude that it's going to be difficult and they aren't going to like it. It takes a good amount of time at the beginning of the school year to get beyond that. So we thought, what if we try to give kids exposure to science sooner? Can we influence their perception? We piloted a summer learning program last summer that was aimed at doing just that. We invited elementary school students and ended up with a group of about 30 2nd- and 3rd-graders. Our goal was to give them exposure to science in hopes of creating positive perception. To test whether we were successful, we surveyed students before and after the program. We found that, going into the program, the biggest portion of students (40%) felt just "ok" about science, whereas after the program, most of these shifted into positive perceptions, with nearly 70% of total students expressing some level of interest towards science. We feel this demonstrates early success of the program and that we should not only continue to offer it, but also expand our reach with it going forward.

Stay tuned for my next post, where we'll discuss how to boil this down further into the Big Idea.