Playbook

The playbook is my way to share how to tell visual stories with data by way of clear and thoughtfully organized lessons. I am offering ‘plays’ that have worked for me. I trust your judgement to decide which approaches might work better for you.

I am posting a lesson every couple of weeks. This is a draft outline and may change as the playbook is written. Please do subscribe to get informed when the lessons are posted.

Introduction

What is Telling Visual Stories with Data - A brief introduction to data visualization and storytelling

Storytelling with Data - A presentation on data visualization and storytelling

Art of Observation

Starting with Structure and Synthesis - Where do we start from? Let us start by putting some structure around our data visualizations

Learning the Basic Principles - Let us understand the ground rules for designing a good visualization. We need to know the rules to break it.

Making Tables & Graph - It is surprising how often we represent data using different types of table and graphs. Do you know when to use which one?

Visualizing Text - We know that gaining insight from qualitative text is hard. However, thinking of ways to visualize text is even harder. Can we make it easy?

Adding Interactivity - We mostly stick to static visuals like in a text book. Why aren’t data visualizations interactive and playful?

Art of Listening

Making the Story Stick - We have all heard stories right from our childhood. So what special ingredients do stories need to capture our attention?

Developing your Story Spine - How do we translate the traditional story elements into our data-driven story? One way is to use the ‘Story Spine’ Structure

Telling Stories with Data - How do we bring this together? Let’s map the elements of doing good storytelling and data visualisation in sync.

Presenting with Impact - We have all watched presentators that have captured the imagination of the audience. How do we ensure we have presence and impact when we are telling your data-stories?

Art of Learning

Powerful R

• Data Visualization in R
• Interactive Graphics in R
• Simplified Grammar of Graphics
• Learning ggplot2 in R
• Multi Variable Visualization in R

Animated Processing

Swiss Knife D3.js

Good ol’ PowerPoint

Polished Tableau