Framework for Storytelling with Data

Data by itself doesn’t help us very much. We can gather as much of it as we want, but it won’t bring people together or get them to do anything. Because data has so much to offer, when we look at our data, figure out what it means, and explain what we’ve learned in a way that everyone can understand, we’ve turned it into something very valuable: a story.

Stories are more interesting than facts because they stay with us longer. The same goes for giving information to our team and to the people in charge. Data storytelling can help people act on the things they learn from data. Without good communication, our audience might not notice or remember our insights. Hard and soft skills together help us get the most out of our data.

Telling stories is an important part of a product manager’s job that is often overlooked. If someone asks us, as a product manager, what makes our product different and better than the competition, we can give a long list of reasons to back up our success. It’s what it can do. It’s the price, how well it works, how new it is, and so on. And we’re probably telling potential customers the same things when we talk to them.

If we present our data as a bunch of unrelated charts and graphs, our audience might find it hard to understand or, even worse, come to the wrong conclusions. This can cause us to make bad decisions, which can hurt our business in a big way.

Here is a five-step framework that we can use to structure the storytelling exercise:

1. Identify the audience.

2. Develop a ...