Settle on the audience: Before creating the story, know the audience. In businesses, an audience can belong to varied organizational levels and functions and possess disparate domain knowledge.
2. Choose and analyze the data set: Raw data must be analyzed before a story can be built around it. Data analytics tools can help detect trends, correlations, outliers and abnormalities.
3. Find the story in the data: Identify what’s newsworthy about the analyzed data. The patterns and relationships found in the previous step will form the basis of the story. Look for a journey through the data that has the potential to change an audience’s opinions or behavior.
4. Create the narrative: Although the story should have an emotional component, be true to the data. Don’t attempt to bend or hide facts just to serve the story. Rather, choose the right data points to support the story and inspire the audience to act.
5. Build visualizations that support your narrative: Make the data as impactful and easy to understand as possible. Vary usage of charts, graphs, illustrations and pictures, but keep it simple. Busy or complex visualizations can increase cognitive load and, therefore, impede audience understanding.