Hey, I'm Lea Pica data storytelling advocate at leapica.com.
And I'm going to be speaking at MeasureSummit about the top blind spots and
bad habits that are stopping you from getting data presentation, glory,
and recognition.
Hey there, Measure Geeks, Julian here back with another video. Now,
telling stories is something we've all grew up with and we have been shaped by
stories all our years. Think of your parents, your schooling,
or your political views stories are everywhere.
So why shouldn't we use them with our data?
It's a fact that it's actually pretty hard to take data and get insights out of
it, and then change a person with that data, because not always,
you are making the decisions, but with storytelling of your data,
you can make it happen.
That's why today we have Lea Pica from leapica.com On the channel to teach us
about data storytelling,
because she is a true expert in taking data and convincing and moving people
forward with a compelling presentation of that data. Now,
Lea is an in demand speaker, a trainer,
a podcaster who teaches specifically how you can tell stories with data
and inspire action. Now, I talked to Lea for our upcoming event MeasureSummit,
where she conducts a session about data storytelling and how you can craft your
data presentation to inspire action. Today,
we're going to hear a little part from her session where she specifically talks
about how we can use charts in our presentation,
but if you want to catch the whole session and want to hear from many other
speakers at MeasureSummit 2020,
just head over to measuresummit.com and get your free ticket today.
All right, we've got lots of cover.
So let's dive into the MeasureSummit session with Lea Pica.
Speaking of using images in presentations, I have really good news.
Your data is imagery.
It's not quite the same as a picture of a person,
but it is incredibly powerful tool. And just like, you know,
your presentation tool, you have to learn how to use it, right?
And that brings us to the third and final pillar maximize their data absorption.
This step in the process is about learning data is best practices that
help communicate insights quickly and effectively,
and is not about looking pretty, snazzy or exciting.
Even if you get that request. And the first step of that process,
which we could go way deep on.
But I want you to think about this now is choosing the most appropriate
visualization for your message.
That doesn't mean choosing the first choice that comes up when your tool
suggests it.
It means having a really solid practical grasp of how every chart
type is used,
at least the most effective ones and using them consistently to communicate your
message. Now, you don't have to do this alone.
This is part of what I teach in my courses,
but if you really want to like dive into all different kinds of chart types,
there's a fantastic book by Stephanie evergreen,
where she talks about the most effective chart types,
but also how to select them based on your business question.
So I just want to throw that resource to you as well as the other areas and
things that I offer. So, once you've chosen that,
one of the most important steps of the whole data communication process is
about taking away rather than what you're adding in.
So I'm a crunchy granola hippie. I love to detox, every day,
get clean. And I love to do that with my data visuals.
So detoxing does not mean taking your data and dropping it into a chart,
which is actually, this is one of the presets in Excel,
and it can look like this and then just walking away, no,
you have intentional design decisions to make, to get that,
looking like something that will help your audience understand you right away.
So I can't go step by step through this process,
but you're going to see a before and after of what a truly detox chart looks
like.
And you'll probably be amazed at how clean and simple this feels
compared to what you just saw. So just to go over,
it's eliminating 3d, it's removing the background, the borders, the gridlines,
the axes, all that's, that's what I call chart fluff,
refining your chart choice in your size,
directly labeling data to prevent extra legends.
And notice that I made this chart look kind of sad and
boring right now with a uniform neutral color,
I would prefer gray. There's an intentional reason for that.
It's not to make you sad or look at less exciting,
but now I'm going to use color as one of my most
powerful data storytelling techniques to direct you to the data.
I want you to see where we're going to take a bold
standout color like this blue to strategically emphasize
your story. Maybe your story is in display.
Maybe it's an organic search,
but I'm using color here to distinguish what I want to communicate.
That is the most important thing. And for me,
that is what intentional data storytelling is about.
Now,
what we often do in terms of storytelling is what kind of slap
of, you know, the name of what the chart is on the title, right?
We see that all the time. Boring,
no one cares about what the chart is and you've already put
them to sleep.
Not a lot of people know that that title area is the very first place people
look when they hit a slide. So it's very important real estate.
So we're going to change out the title of what this is. It's a statement.
And we're going to turn that into an insight and observation of what the chart
actually means. Connect those dots for your audience.
Now this is called a McKinsey title,
and it's guaranteed that however, they look at your chart and interpret it:
The message that you're trying to convey is going to come across crystal
clear.
Notice that I also matched the color of the words and the numbers in the title
to my data point to reinforce that connective thread and send
my message home to you.
This is one of my most powerful tools in the toolbox.
Now also notice, you know, this is one particular insight,
but maybe there's more to this story. If I add a little ellipsis at the end,
the three dots. Now you're building anticipation. You know,
this is what we initially found when we did a first pass.
We weren't too surprised,
but what we found next really surprised us dunt, dunt,
duh.
We actually saw higher efficiency when we looked at email conversion rate.
So now we're seeing that we have a bigger opportunity with email.
You can see how these, this story comes alive when we break it up this way,
and it doesn't have to be hard.
This particular technique is called a side by side bar chart or table
lens.
And it allows you to put two different metrics in one screen using the same
categories. So you can build a story like that on your own.
All right, so there you have it.
This was a sneak peek from the session with Lea Pica of LeaPica.com.
She goes on to give some more great tips and insights to ensure no one is
falling asleep in your next data presentation.
So if you're interested to see more,
you can sign up at measuresummit.com and get your free ticket to this
event. And we have many other great sessions from Krista Seiden to Simo Ahava,
to Mike Rhodes, Khrystyna Grynko and many others. So don't miss out.
And I hope to see you at MeasureSummit 2020, and as always, my name is Julian.
Till the next time.