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# More than Telling a Story: A Closer Look at the Process of Transforming Data into Visually Shared Stories

Bongshin Lee, Nathalie Henry Riche, Petra Isenberg, Sheelagh Carpendale

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Bongshin Lee, Nathalie Henry Riche, Petra Isenberg, Sheelagh Carpendale. More than Telling a Story: A Closer Look at the Process of Transforming Data into Visually Shared Stories. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 2015, 35 (5), pp.84–90. 10.1109/MCG.2015.99. hal-01158445

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Submitted on 3 Dec 2015

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# More than Telling a Story:
A Closer Look at the Process of Transforming
Data into Visually Shared Stories

Visualizations are increasingly used “in the wild” to tell compelling stories supported by data. Examples include Hans Rosling’s talks on human development trends using Gapminder (gapminder.org) and the use of visualizations on the web (e.g., Figure 1) including news media such as the New York Times<fnref n="1" /> and the Guardian<fnref n="2" />. Given the practical power visualizations can have in communicating facts and opinions, the visualization research community has begun to pay more attention to the need and use of visualization as a storytelling medium to tell compelling data stories.

In this article, we take a closer look at how the visualization community has discussed visual storytelling. We argue that so far the community has been using the term “storytelling” in a very broad way without a clear consensus or discussion on what a visual data story encompasses. Yet, despite this wide view on what constitutes a data story, visualization research on storytelling has mainly centered on how data visualization components contribute to communication. Instead, we argue for first narrowing the scope of what visual data stories encompass and then for expanding our research focus to the whole process of transforming data into visually shared stories, including formative processes such as the crafting of narrative structures.

Narrowing the scope of what is termed a data story, for instance, by distinguishing between a visual data story and a data visualization, helps us open the door for a more detailed examination, covering the aspects of the visual data storytelling process that have so far received less research attention. We discuss an entire process of transforming data into visually shared stories, incorporating steps involved in a) finding insights (*explore data*), b) turning these insights

<figure><img src="image_2.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 1:** An example visual data story, "Human Development Trends, 2005," free material from www.gapminder.org.</figcaption></figure>

into a narrative (*make a story*), and c) communicating this narrative to an audience (*tell a story*). We conclude with research opportunities in visualization as a storytelling medium in the light of this broader process.

## Storytelling Scope

The word “storytelling” has a long history during which it has been used in many ways in different domains. As a result, it invokes meaning and nuance without having one single agreed-upon definition. Yet, most descriptions of “storytelling” require some sort of controlled delivery or presentation of information [2]. This delivery can be with or without a predefined temporal or narrative structure but always contains components that form the “story” (structures, elements, and concepts) and those that influence the “telling” part of storytelling (people, tools, and channels).

Similarly, no single crisp definition of a “visual data story” has emerged. We argue against using the broadest

<footnote n="1">¹ http://www.nytimes.com</footnote>

<footnote n="2">² https://www.guardian.com</footnote>
sense, which would consider any shared visualization to be
a data story, given that visualization is by definition
focused on making data visible—and, thus, on presenting
data to a viewer. A visualization can be thought of as
having both design elements that form a story and
presentation methods that have been used to “tell” it [13]. If
we take this broadest view on visual data stories, however,
any images containing even just simple charts with little
explanations or reading aids would be called visual data
stories. We suggest that, to facilitate a more practical
discussion on the structure of visual data storytelling in the
visualization community, we need to consider focusing the
scope of visual data stories.

Several research papers have considered this problem
of defining what storytelling in the domain of visualization
encompasses. Segel and Heer [14] introduce the term
"narrative visualization" emphasizing visual stories that
include a "narrative" or a series of causally related events.
They also show that storytelling in the context of
visualization cannot be separated from talking about visual
narratives but still needs to be more concretely defined—in
particular since the differences and commonalities to
traditional storytelling mechanisms and strategies are not
well understood yet. They attempt to have a better
understanding of "visual data stories" through formulating
the design space of narrative visualization. Hullman and
Diakopoulos [5] begin from Segel and Heer's term
"narrative visualization" and define it as a genre that
combines interaction techniques for exploratory control
over insights gained and communicative, rhetorical, and
persuasive techniques for conveying an intended "story."
Similar to Segel and Heer's work the authors do not clearly
define what constitutes a "visual data story" but aim to
better describe the visualization techniques involved in
communicating an intended message. While these two
approaches are a great first step as they are valuable for
understanding communication mechanisms for
visualization in general, it is still not clear exactly what is
or is not a visual data story.

In discussing the process of transforming data into
visually shared stories, we propose that visual data stories
can be thought of as follows:

* A visual data story includes a set of story pieces, i.e., specific facts backed up by data (e.g., how energy consumption has changed over the years).

* Most of the story pieces are visualized to support one or more intended messages. The visualization includes annotations (labels, pointers, text, etc.) or narration to clearly highlight and emphasize this message, and to

avoid ambiguity (especially for asynchronous
storytelling).

* Story pieces are presented with a meaningful order or connection between them to support the author's high-level communication goal, which can range from educating or entertaining the viewer with illustration of facts to convincing or persuading them with thought-provoking opinions.

Taking this narrower view of a visual data story, we
can exclude several types of stories not related to
visualization, allowing us to uncover research opportunities
relevant to the visualization community. For example,
typical stories told in books and movies are not pertinent to
our discussion unless they are focused around data
visualizations. In addition, we exclude web-based
interactive visualizations that support completely free
exploration without any guidance. We also do not consider
visual data storytelling to include, for example, charts
posted on the web unless they are enriched with written
explanations or annotations that help the viewer capture the
intended message. For example, many visualizations that
include only a title above the chart usually leave the
interpretation of the content entirely to the viewer.

It is important to note that these last examples—simple
charts created from data—can be turned into visual data
stories according to our narrower scope; we could add
appropriate annotations for a simple story or we could
combine multiple of them to form a longer, more complex
story. However, this process of turning data into a visual
story has so far received little attention. We argue that it is
just as important to consider research on the process of
creating a visual data story as it is to understand which
features best communicate it. We describe such a possible
process and open areas for research next.

Visual Data Storytelling Process

Few research papers have in the past considered a
wider visual storytelling process. An exception is the article
by Kosara and Mackinlay [9] whose goal is to provide a
high-level overview of the state of storytelling research.
They briefly mention a working model for how stories are
constructed based on how journalists work and argue that
visualization tools for analysis are rarely usable for
presentation purposes.

In the following, we contribute a much more detailed
description of the storytelling process in visualization with
regard to activities, artifacts, and roles involved to develop
a more encompassing look at the visual storytelling process
<figure><img src="image_3.png" /><figcaption>**Figure 2: Storytelling process: transforming data into visually shared stories.**</figcaption></figure>

and to uncover open areas for research. We propose the visual data storytelling process (VDSP) (Figure 2) as a working model, which is derived from other models in the data journalism literature [4]. The VDSP summarizes the main roles and activities that visualization storytellers engage in as they turn raw data into a visually shared story, along with the types of artifacts that result from these activities.

While the storytelling process is ordered linearly in the figure for illustration purposes, it does not have to begin on the left and move to the right; it can contain many loops and multiple occurrences of each component. For the sake of simplicity, the three main components—exploring data, making a story, and telling a story—are introduced with their respective artifacts in a linear order.

## Exploring Data

Exploring data involves the set of activities centered around exploring and analyzing data. Data is the raw material that constitutes the source of the visual data story content. Pertinent data excerpts are collected through exploratory analysis. These may be simple such as recorded data facts or steps from the analysis process. They may be more complex such as derived data insights, interesting sets or sequences within the data, and/or process details and variations. They may include the first quick externalizations of the data such as charts from spreadsheets or hand sketches made during the analysis. At this point in the process, this collection of excerpts may or may not be tied to any specific visual representation. The result of data

exploration when making a visual data story is a collection of the chosen data excerpts.

## Making a Story

To make a story the data excerpts gathered in step one need to be assembled into a storyline that is interesting, illuminating, and compelling. The sequence plays a critical role in a story; the same set of excerpts can have impact or can fall flat. A significant part of *making a story* is the process of constructing the storyline or plot. The activities involved are ordering, establishing logical connections, developing flow, formulating a message, and creating the denouement. These activities that are often intertwined may be achieved sequentially, simultaneously, or through multiple iterations. Furthermore, it is possible while developing the storyline to find it necessary to go back to the *explore data* stage to gather more excerpts (e.g., insights or evidence). The final outcome of this step in the process is the plot of a story which describes how the story pieces are related (e.g., in time, cause and effect, patterns, etc.) and what they mean in an overall context.

## Telling a Story

Telling a story is the general process of materializing the abstract plot and delivering the story. It consists of the following activities: building a presentation (i.e., creating story material with the chosen medium), sharing the story using the story material, and finally receiving and handling the feedback from the audience.
In the building phase of *telling a story*, a plot and story pieces are taken and turned into story material. Story material is the materialization of each piece of this abstract content through the development of visual representations, interactions, animations, annotations, or narration. For example, story material could be one or more visualizations assembled in a slide deck, a video with narration, an infographic presented on a poster, or a demo planned with an interactive system for the live presentation.

This story material turns into a shared story once it is delivered to at least one person (i.e., audience). Ultimately, the perceived story is what the audience understands through the storytelling experience. We acknowledge that in the current practice, *making a story* is often merged with the presentation building phase of the *telling a story* component. For example, a storyteller may sequence specific visual representations to build a plot while making a presentation. However, by making the distinction explicit in the process we can capture many other ways these two components can interact. Also, *making a story* and *building story material* require different skill sets, involving two different roles we describe next.

## Roles in the Visual Storytelling Process

A number of different roles are involved in turning data into a visually shared story: the data analyst engages in the process of exploring and analyzing the data that is the foundation of the story. A scripter builds the plot using the excerpts presented to him or her. The editor prepares the story material, and the presenter is finally responsible for delivering the story. The audience experiences the story and provides feedback. Note that it is possible (and often likely) that one person plays multiple of these roles. For example, one person can analyze the data, build a story, create the story material, and then present it. Yet, in many professional settings, it is also possible that the roles are taken on by different people. For example, professional analysts or statisticians may be hired to dig through the data and provide interesting excerpts, a journalist may take this input and build a plot, a graphic designer may prepare infographics using the plot with the prepared story pieces,

<table><caption>Table 1: Four common storytelling settings</caption><thead><tr><td>Example Scenario</td><td>Time</td><td>Place</td><td>Audience Participation Level</td></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Live presentations</td><td>synchronous</td><td>co-located</td><td>low</td></tr><tr><td>Dynamic discussions</td><td>synchronous</td><td>co-located</td><td>high</td></tr><tr><td>Recorded videos / Static infographics</td><td>asynchronous</td><td>distributed</td><td>low</td></tr><tr><td>Guided tours / Interactive infographics</td><td>asynchronous</td><td>distributed</td><td>high</td></tr></tbody></table>

and a professional typesetter will include the infographics in the news medium.

## External Factors: Audience, Setting, and Medium

A set of external factors may impact the storytelling process. In every step (i.e., when searching for data, creating a plot with story pieces, building story material, or delivering a visual story), considerations regarding the *target audience* at the receiving end of the shared story are typically taken into account. A next factor concerns the *setting* (e.g., context), which determines the way a visual story is presented. On a higher level one can characterize the setting by time and place where the story is conveyed. The setting can be further characterized by the level of possible audience participation. Table 1 shows how different combinations of the setting can lead to commonly encountered storytelling scenarios with data. The *medium* is another factor that influences how the story material will be created and presented as well as consumed. For example, a story consumption experience with a static image is very different from that with an interactive infographics, supporting a simple, controlled interaction. The choice of media (e.g., video, images, text, narration, and interactive system) comes with presentation parameters that are more or less appropriate (e.g., color palettes or fonts).

## Ethics in Visual Data Storytelling

When visualizations are leveraged to make intended messages more comprehensible and persuasive, visual representations can be misused unintentionally, offer controversial emphasis, or even be abused intentionally. Howard argues that given the rapidly increasing amount of digital media, data journalists must be more conscious of ethics than ever [5]. It seems sensible that the ethics maintained in journalism should be upheld in visual data storytelling as well. To increase the transparency and credibility of visual data stories, throughout the visual data storytelling process, we need to make it easier and more desirable for the authors to share underlying data and their analysis process.

## Research Opportunities

The storytelling process we described above helps us identify and articulate several research opportunities. We first discuss missing efforts for the two components of the visual data storytelling process—*make a story* and *tell a story*. We then reflect on whether it is desirable to build an encompassing tool that supports the entire visual data storytelling process. Finally, we underline the need to
develop novel methodologies to assess the quality of both authoring and experiencing visual stories.

## Help People Make a Compelling Story

While the visualization community has a plethora of techniques supporting the exploration and analysis of data, not much attention has been put on helping a scripter make a story, i.e., identify a sequence of compelling story pieces. In practice, people often make a story (even if just in their mind) while they are either exploring the data or building a presentation. Yet, visualization systems do not usually incorporate help for the general *making a story* phase and in particular they fall short in supporting people in the steps to collect and organize excerpts from data exploration that are potentially interesting for the final visual data story. Furthermore, they do not usually provide support for building a plot from such a collection. As a result, people have to keep track of a set of interesting visualizations, often resorting to capturing them on an auxiliary storage such as creating a document with screen captures and notes. i2 Analyst's Notebook [8] is a rare exception in that it is aimed at streamlining this process. However, there is no explicit support for selecting and ordering these elements to form a coherent plot with a beginning and an end.

Since the structure and sequence (i.e., plot) in stories can influence the reception of a story, Hullman et al. [7] recently investigated the forms and reactions to sequencing in linear, “slideshow-style” presentations using visualizations. There are research opportunities in further exploring ways to provide guidelines for making a good story, in suggesting different plots, and in letting people experiment several plots and select the most compelling one. For example, as Show Me [11] suggests an appropriate visualization for given data properties such as data type and dimension with other possibilities, a system for story building can automatically suggest possible data stories for given story properties (i.e., story point, intended message, and goal). This could benefit novices as well as people with extensive training in communication (e.g., data journalists) or with inherent storytelling skills (i.e., ability to create a compelling story).

## Make It Easier to Tell a Story

Even authors inherently skilled at creating compelling story structures face the challenge of producing the story material. This step may prove extremely difficult and time consuming for people with low programming skills. Several online tools (e.g., Many Eyes) are accessible to non-experts, offering a set of visualizations that are based on pre-defined templates. They usually support the creation of

visualizations through three main steps—import data, select the visualization type, and configure the visual attributes (e.g., color palettes). While there is some support for simple interactions these are usually limited to things such as mouse over and click, making these tools largely only suitable for rather simple stories.

To support more sophisticated interactions and animations, people have resorted to programming, using libraries such as D3 (www.d3.org). While these libraries have been adopted by many designers and data analysts, they require programming skills. This motivated recent research on helping people with little or no programming skills create custom visualizations. A recent example is Ellipsis, a graphical interface for story authoring with pre-existing visualizations and the Ellipsis domain-specific language (DSL) [12]. It is an interesting research space to support the easy creation of custom annotations through direct manipulation and reuse of existing story elements.

Most of the existing tools are meant to help people create material that can be shared on the web asynchronously. However, a presentation based on an interactive visualization could allow the presenter to be more responsive to the audience by interacting with the data and showing the action in real-time. For example, Tableau recently introduced a feature called Story Points [1], which allows people to capture a set of visualizations with specific states as a dashboard (a story point) within Tableau. These can be recorded with captions and reordered with simple drag and drop interaction. Designing an easy-to-use, yet powerful experience for authoring the story material for interactive visualization system is an interesting future research topic.

Delivering a story live also presents a unique opportunity to perceive the audience's reaction as the story is told, potentially allowing the presenter to adjust the presentation style in real-time to provide a better experience. There are opportunities to help the presenter monitor audience feedback and assess their engagement as well as to facilitate or suggest alteration to the on-going presentation. In addition, other recent research has focused on techniques to better engage the audience. For example, SketchStory helps presenters perform an engaging storytelling by attracting attention and creating anticipation [10]. However, it only offers limited annotation and interaction with the data during the presentation. More research on supporting advanced features such as emphasizing different components via annotation, highlighting, and zooming during a live presentation is a promising avenue for research.
## One Tool for the Whole Process?

One research opportunity is an attempt to combine data analysis, scripting, editing, and presenting functionality all into one tool or a suite of tools. However, we need to reflect on whether this is a desirable outcome.

On one hand, a holistic tool may facilitate every requirement of each of the storytelling components and aid people in taking on the different roles in the process. For example, the scripter's work may be significantly lessened as new or updated data is processed by the analyst. Thus, the design of an encompassing tool or a suite of tools that allows fluid switch between different storytelling components and activities, keeps track of the data, and updates story material as updated data appears seems like a promising endeavor. On the other hand, such an encompassing tool may either be extremely feature-rich (e.g., to support various data types, visualization styles, and presentation techniques) and hence possibly difficult to learn and use, or limited in functionality and, thus, only be useful for certain types of stories with certain types of data.

## Beyond Evaluating a Story

Kosara and Mackinlay [9] discussed evaluation as a research challenge with a focus on understanding the effectiveness of a story in conveying its message. While we agree that this question is important, evaluation challenges exist beyond studying the story itself. Understanding where, when, and why the visual storytelling process is successful is another fundamental challenge to tackle.

Understanding why a story is or is not effective may require an answer that goes beyond looking at story delivery and the reception of the story by the audience. Several factors in the visual data storytelling process can influence the success of a story and thus can lead to poorly delivered stories still being successful or brilliantly delivered stories to fail. Designing evaluation methodologies across the process we described earlier is, thus, a major research question. It is important to derive study protocols, new methods, and analysis practices for each phase of the visual data storytelling process and attempting to evaluate the process as a whole.

As storytelling involves either people taking on multiple roles (data analyst, scripter, editor, and presenter) or several people working together, the story creation and the delivery process can become a collaborative activity. As such, a wealth of research opportunities open up. For example, collaborative evaluation metrics could be applied

or we could study communication successes and failures between different people involved in the process.

## Emerging Scenarios

Our visual data storytelling process supports several scenarios involving storytelling with data by taking different paths through the components and different manifestations of each of the components. We envision that other storytelling opportunities exist that include visualization support and it is interesting to consider whether our visual data storytelling process could be expanded, with steps or activities being added, or modified to more clearly capture emerging scenarios. For example, our storytelling process could support the audience actually taking on the role of data analyst, scripter, and/or editor. Involving the audience in the story creation process by opening up the editing and scripting roles is an exciting emerging scenario. For example, Sprint's Global Water Experiment [3], where the audience could edit an initial visualization and data, illustrates the potential of collaborative story creation. Such emerging scenarios can empower the audience and make the raw data and the story creation process more transparent.

## Conclusions

In this article, we proposed to narrow the scope of what a visual data story is and, with this more focused definition, to widen the scope of research around visual data stories to include the entire process of transforming data into visually shared stories. By drawing a line between a visual data story and a general data visualization, we hope to facilitate better structured discussions around compelling techniques for storytelling with data visualization. Inspired by related process models in the data journalism literature, we present a comprehensive view of the visual data storytelling process, integrating the steps involved in finding insights (explore data), turning these insights into a narrative (make a story), and communicating this narrative to an audience (tell a story). By contributing this broader look at the process of visual data storytelling by encompassing more than *telling a story* part, we identify opportunities for future research in visualization as a storytelling medium. By pursuing these new avenues of research, visualizations can enable more effective storytelling with data.

## References

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*Bongshin Lee* is a researcher in Microsoft Research's neXus Group, bongshin@microsoft.com.

*Nathalie Henry Riche* is a researcher in Microsoft Research's neXus Group, nath@microsoft.com.

*Petra Isenberg* is a research scientist in INRIA's Aviz project, petra.isenberg@inria.fr.

*Sheelagh Carpendale* is a professor at the University of Calgary, sheelagh@ucalgary.ca.