2025-10-03 09:59:01
Over the past few weeks, in response to my posts about our newest book, it’s been amazing to hear how various titles from the SWD library have impacted your work and careers. My first book—storytelling with data—has inspired a passionate group of superfans who not only apply the lessons, but also share their passion for SWD with others.
If this sounds like you, I’d love to invite you to be part of something special.
Earlier this year, I revisited storytelling with data and have refreshed and augmented it, working with my publisher to craft a beautiful, fit-for-display 10th anniversary hardcover edition. It will be published on November 11th, ten years after the original bestseller was released, and features updated visuals and bonus content. I’m proud to celebrate a decade of data storytelling with this milestone publication.
I invite you to join our official team of superfans, helping to launch the 10-year anniversary edition (SWD10) into the world and join in the celebration. The role of a superfan is simple: share your genuine enthusiasm for SWD10 with your colleagues and network. I’ll make it easy by equipping you with content and ideas.
To become an official SWD10 superfan, preorder two copies of the 10th anniversary edition (one for you and one to share!) and fill out this form by October 10th.
As an SWD10 superfan, you’ll get some super special perks, including:
Weekly insider emails from me in October and November with never-before-seen content and easy-to-share prompts
Exclusive SWD10 swag (designed just for superfans!)
Automatic entry into weekly giveaways for storytelling with data gear
A front-row ticket to our virtual publication celebration
Thank you for helping me celebrate this anniversary and spread the power of effective data storytelling. I couldn’t do it without you!
*International readers: This edition is printing in the US, with availability in other countries to follow. If you preorder from outside the US, you can still participate fully in the SWD10 superfan program.
2025-09-25 21:11:12
What do dog training and data storytelling have in common? A lot, as it turns out.
For those who are hardcore SWD fans, you’ve probably seen me reference dogs before. I shared my dog Nemo’s progress in this makeover article, and I also share a dog-themed makeover in our new book, storytelling with data: before and after, which includes 20 examples of how we’ve helped our clients overcome common data communication challenges.
What you may not know is that dogs occupy most of my time when my brain is not focused on data. I’ve recently started an apprentice program on the weekends to become a dog trainer. This past week, while working on a particular skill, I asked my teacher if I was doing it right.
His response? “The dog will tell you!”
At first, I didn’t quite understand. But then I realized how powerful that answer was! Dog training, like data storytelling, is all about clear communication. If I want to know if I’m communicating clearly, I have to pay attention to the dog to see if they understood.
If you want to know if your graph, slides, or story is clear, the audience will let you know. They decide what works, not you.
This is a hard truth to swallow. In the exploration stage of analyzing data, it’s all about you and what you understand. However, as you shift to communicating data, your preferences and beliefs should take a back seat to those of your audience.
Even as someone who shares this lesson with others regularly, I fall victim from time to time—most recently while working on Chapter 14 in before & after.
Here’s the background information and original slide, taken directly from the book:
Electrixion Group, a local electricity company, recently expanded and is now facing a shortage of certified electricians. Employees believe the expansion was a mistake, arguing that they can’t support such a large regional area because there isn’t enough local talent to hire. The head of talent acquisition wants to challenge these ideas by showing that there are plenty of certified electricians eager to work in their main off and warehouse—the real issue is the need for better advertising and recruitment. To make their case, the director planned to present the slide below.
Knaflic, Cisneros, Velez. storytelling with data: before & after, Wiley, © 2025
At first glance, I was impressed. There’s something captivating about the funnel diagram, unique map, and bold crimson color. However, it took me a while to fully understand it. Without the back story, I’m not sure I’d walk away with the right takeaway.
Further reflection made me realize that there’s a lot going on among the funnel diagram, callout boxes, and map. A simple improvement would be to select either the funnel diagram or the map as the primary visual on the slide. This communication would further benefit from a strong takeaway title and better layout.
My immediate preference was to stick with the funnel diagram. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to turn this diagram into a square area chart!
Below is my first remake.
Is it easier to grasp the point? I thought so.
But it’s not about me. When I considered the scenario and the audience (busy electricians eager to head to their appointments for the day), the slide felt overly complex for the message. The employees don’t really care about this level of detail.
After soliciting feedback and paying close attention to facial expressions and follow-up questions, I realized that I was designing for me and not the audience. Remember, if you want to know if your communication is clear, the audience will let you know.
Instead of leaning into the funnel diagram, I settled on the map. It provided a nice understanding of where the talent resided in proximity to the warehouse, supporting the key point that with thoughtful marketing, recruiting local talent is possible. I also decided to prominently display a key takeaway and do the math for my audience. Approximately 70% of the electricians within 50 miles of the headquarters haven’t previously worked at the company, and therefore should be who we target (5.5K divided by 7.8K). This is the final makeover that made it into the book.
Knaflic, Cisneros, Velez. storytelling with data: before & after, Wiley, © 2025
Simple, to the point, and exactly what this particular audience wanted.
If you want to learn more about how I transformed this makeover step-by-step or if you love learning via example, order our new book, storytelling with data: before & after. It’s available this week at all places where books are sold (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, BAM, and Wiley). For those outside the U.S. who want to use Wiley, pick your location here. If you’ve already snagged a copy and have a free moment, we’d greatly appreaciate if you’d share your review.
2025-09-23 04:21:42
My dad doesn’t read.
I mean, he can read. He was a public school teacher for 45 years. He just chooses not to read for pleasure. You know how when you’re at a loss for what to get a middle-aged man for his birthday or for Fathers’ Day, and you default to, like, a coffee table book about golf courses or a thoroughly researched history of World War II? That never worked for my dad. In our family’s weekly Sunday phone calls, it’s my mom who asks if I’ve read any good books lately.
That’s why, when she texted me on Saturday to say that her copy of storytelling with data: before & after had arrived early, she said, “I’ll read at least some of your chapters before we talk tomorrow.” Not, “Your father and I are excited to read your book.”
Imagine my surprise when my mom answered the phone on Sunday and said, “I haven’t read any of your book yet…your father took it when it arrived and he hasn’t given it back yet.”
Odd, I thought. But what was even odder was what happened when my dad came into the room and joined the conversation.
“Mike,” he said, “I picked up your book and I couldn’t stop reading it!”
“Really?” I replied, with a fair bit of skepticism—not only for the reasons enumerated above, but also because my dad is very much the stereotypical curmudgeon: hard to please, and even harder to impress. (He might feel positively about something, but that doesn’t mean anyone else is allowed to know about it.)
“Honest to God,” he said in his Boston accent, “I never really understood what your job was before. I knew it had something to do with data, but reading this…
“I totally get it now. It’s just amazing how much you can do to make things, not just graphs, but everything—reports, emails, everything—look so much better.”
“Well, yeah,” I replied, “it’s meant to give people an idea of the thought process that we go through when we’re trying to improve their communications. That’s what we teach to other people in our workshops, so that they can learn to do it for themselves.”
“Yes! Exactly! And the writing is just so easy to understand.
“I thought this stuff would be confusing or hard to get, but the way you all talk about it, it just makes perfect sense.”
I started to respond, but he kept going: “And there are so many things you can do to these graphs that I never would have thought of…it’s so interesting to see!”
Now, dear reader, at this point you yourself are likely feeling a fair bit of the same skepticism towards me, your narrator, as I felt towards my father at the beginning of our conversation. I get it! Of course my own father is going to have a positive review of the book his son co-authored.
But there was an energy and an excitement in his voice that, in all candor, I rarely hear from my dad these days. The specific things he was referencing as the conversation continued—he identified specific chapter numbers and examples that particularly caught his attention—convinced me that this exuberance was genuine.
When we set out to write this book, we knew that the visual transformations would be appealing, particularly to an audience of people who work with data and graphs on a regular basis. We also knew that clear and accessible writing is essential to successful storytelling, which is why we strive to demonstrate it not only in this book, but throughout everything we do as a company.
What I personally did not realize, until I heard it from my own father, is how enjoyable, satisfying, and motivational it can be for anyone to see these before-and-after makeovers, regardless of their personal or professional connection to data visualization.
Beyond that, I certainly didn’t expect this to be the means by which my parents would finally get a clear understanding of just what I do at work all day. I’ve tried to explain it before, but it seems that this particular combination of words and pictures, supporting a clear narrative, did the trick.
Which, I suppose, shouldn’t be a surprise at all.
There are many ways to measure the success of a book: the number of people it reaches; the number of units sold; the recognition it receives; its longevity in the public’s awareness; the effect it has on the world. This week, I found a new way to measure the success of a book: the joy it can bring to an unexpected audience.
storytelling with data: before & after is available on shelves and online as of this week. And while it was written with data people in mind, it turns out it might just be for anyone who's ever looked at a graph and thought, I don’t get it—and would be delighted to discover that they actually do.
And if it can turn a lifelong non-reader into a surprise fan? For me, personally, that’s as big a success as I could ever have hoped for.
2025-09-04 21:40:00
If there were one myth I could debunk when it comes to business communications, it would be the belief that in all cases, the more slides you have, the longer your presentation will be.
Often, when managers or meeting organizers want to limit the time a team member presents, they will mandate a slide restriction. This stems from the belief that the number of slides and minutes presented are related.
This notion is silly because it depends on how you use your slides. There have been instances when I talked to a single slide for over ten minutes, and other times when a slide was only visible for 10-15 seconds before moving on to the next.
Connecting the quantity of slides you share to the number of minutes you discuss them isn’t as clear-cut as it may seem, and in my experience, it can be counterproductive. Say there is an upcoming business meeting with a packed agenda:
To ensure each topic can be discussed, all presenters are told to create only one or two slides. This allows the meeting deck to remain at a reasonable size and keep the meeting moving.
Unfortunately, while the slide count is low, the individual slides are usually packed with tons of information that is scaled down to fit.
A significant amount of time is wasted during the meeting simply trying to explain what’s on the slide and how to read it, because the audience is too overwhelmed to process it independently.
How many of us have faced this exact situation? More distressingly, how often are we the overwhelmed audience, slumped in our chairs, wishing that someone hadn’t tried to add the entire encyclopedia into a single PowerPoint slide?
A better alternative when faced with this scenario is to control minutes, not slide counts. If you are running a meeting, give your team a time limit for presenting and for answering questions. Empower them to decide how many slides they need—if any—to accomplish this. If you are contributing to a meeting, be sure to ask how much time you have, and prioritize the timing constraint over all other considerations.
This is a recommendation I made while leading a customized training session with a corporate client earlier this year. The main goal of the day was to upskill the team’s ability to communicate effectively with various audiences, particularly leaders.
Prior to our training session, the group shared examples of how they have communicated with data in the past. It’s helpful when an organization tells me about the challenges they are facing, but I can usually uncover much more when examining their existing graphs, reports, and slides.
The following slide was part of a deck shared at a previous board meeting. The goal was to discuss the competitive broadband market, and reassure board members that the company remained the top provider in the city, despite increased competition.
Before you critique the slide, it’s worth understanding the requirements. The team was instructed to create just one slide to discuss this matter, as the plan was to spend only 5-10 minutes on the topic. The team knew that pie charts probably weren’t the best solution, but resigned to using them because of the one-slide mandate.
To demonstrate to the group that slide count and minutes do not necessarily go hand in hand, I redesigned the data story using the same information. My version used nine slides and could be discussed in two minutes. I also had more space, so I explored other chart types, such as slope graphs and square area charts.
Feel free to watch the short presentation below. (All of the details have been changed to protect confidentiality.)
The next time you are faced with a slide constraint, do your best to recognize that slides and minutes aren’t proportional, and they aren’t equal. If you need to keep business presentations short and targeted, then the amount of time talking is more important than the number of slides used to convey that point.
If you enjoy seeing how we help real teams improve their business communications via example, order our latest book: storytelling with data: before & after. We share 20 powerful transformations of business communications from our client trainings. You can download a sample today, or join our launch team for early access to the book in exchange for your promotion.
2025-09-02 21:13:00
MIKE | For many years, we here at storytelling with data have been singing the praises of the wildly popular guide to designing business intelligence products, the Big Book of Dashboards. Traditionally, we think of dashboards as one of the best ways to explore your data, and at SWD, we focus most of our efforts toward helping folks improve the way they explain their data. That's why we've always found the Big Book of Dashboards and the books in the SWD library to be wonderful complements to each other. For the data analyst who wanted to upskill the full range of their abilities, this combination has served them well.
We were thrilled when we found out that our friends Andy Cotgreave, Amanda Makulec, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Steve Wexler were getting ready to publish the eagerly-awaited follow-up to this iconic work, entitled Dashboards That Deliver. It's slated to be released to the public on September 23, 2025—as it happens, the exact same day that we release our latest book, storytelling with data: before & after!
We decided that there was no better way to celebrate this happy coincidence than to bring the DTD and the SWD:B&A authors together for one mega-challenge here in September. We hope you enjoy it; we hope you participate; and we hope that on September 23, you're adding two great new books to your data visualization collection. And now, to introduce this month's challenge, here’s Amanda.
AMANDA | Dashboards evolve as user needs change, so revisions happen in the real world—and in this month’s SWD challenge! This challenge isn’t just about making a prettier design: it’s about creating a dashboard that serves a clear purpose. That goal is at the heart of our new book, Dashboards That Deliver, which teaches a user-centered, Agile framework for dashboard design that anyone can adapt in their work. Dashboards should have a clear spark (why they’re created), audience, and set of analytical goals, otherwise the most beautiful interfaces will spark more "ooh-ahh" than "ah-ha!"
Both Dashboards That Deliver and storytelling with data: before & after champion the value of iterative design, showcasing how prototyping, feedback, and seemingly simple revisions to charts and dashboards can reshape how people explore data and grasp key takeaways.
The challenge celebrates both books by focusing on a dashboard redesign.
For the challenge, we invite you to revisit a dashboard that could use a refresh and refocus. You can choose one of your old dashboards, or pick a dashboard from the Big Book of Dashboards, many of which are available on the book website. Then, spend a few minutes mapping out your intended audience for the redesigned dashboard and their analytical needs, both of which should inform your redesign.
We celebrate the value of mockups for quick feedback on dashboard concepts, so the format of your submission can be images only (allowing you to use prototyping tools like Figma to mockup new designs) or a fully-built workbook (in which case, post images here, but include a link to the interactive dashboard on the web). Feel free to include annotations or comments to clarify your intended interactivity. In either case, your final submission should include the original dashboard, your redesign, and notes on who your intended audience, what design decisions you made, and what questions people will be able to answer with your new and improved version.
If you’re not using one of the dashboards from the Big Book of Dashboards, we recommend redesigning a dashboard that you have created in the past, where you have ownership of the content and insights around the dashboard use case, or a dashboard that is widely shared and public facing (for example, a COVID dashboard). Please do not select and redesign work by others without their permission! Feedback should be given kindly and by request only.
Share your refreshed dashboard in the SWD community by Sepember 30th at 5PM PT. (If you’re not yet a member of the community, sign up here. It’s totally free and takes about 30 seconds.) If there is any specific feedback or input that you would find helpful, include that detail in your commentary. The DTD and SWD teams will comment on the submissions throughout the course of the month. And finally, tune into the video podcast Chart Chat on October 30 at 11am ET, where the DTD and SWD teams will share and celebrate some of their favorite redesigns from the challenge.
Here are some additional resources to help you redesign your dashboard:
Big Book of Dashboards website and sample dashboards - bigbookofdashboards.com
Dashboards That Deliver website - dashboardsthatdeliver.com
There will be a "Designing Dashboards That Deliver" webinar on Datacamp on Tuesday, September 23 (book release day!) at 11am ET. Registration is here: https://www.datacamp.com/webinars/dashboards-that-deliver-part-1-concepts
2025-08-13 22:55:27
Have you ever struggled to do something you know you want—or need—to do? For example, is it hard to get to the gym regularly, even though you know it's good for your health? Or perhaps you keep putting off practicing that second language, even though you know it's essential for your learning progress. You’re not alone! Knowing what we should do is one thing; actually doing it is another.
I was recently reminded of this challenge while reviewing some feedback about our on-demand course. (I read every single response!) The person said:
”The content was great and a good refresher of things I already knew
...even if I don't always remember to apply them.”
When you commit to doing something regularly, you transform a simple good intention into a lasting habit, and that’s where real growth and change begin. Still, building those habits can be difficult without support.
If you find yourself struggling to implement better data storytelling techniques and want to make practicing effective communication a goal, I invite you to join our upcoming 8-week online course. Our final cohort of the year is about to commence on September 15, making it the perfect next step to deepen your skills in a structured, guided, and practice-driven environment.
Over eight short weeks, my colleague Simon and I will teach you a practical, repeatable process to plan your data story, distill the critical components, create effective graphs, slides, and presentations, and communicate it all in a way that gets your audience’s attention, builds understanding, and drives action. We’ll guide you on this journey with live lectures (recordings will be available) that provide opportunities to practice, ask questions, and get feedback. We’ll also have two optional weekly office hours sessions to ensure you are supported.
The highlight of the course is the final project, which gives you a chance to apply the lessons to a dataset of your own choosing. This can be anything from a passion project to a work-related communication (appropriately anonymized). Each week, assignments build toward the final deliverable, allowing you to make steady progress with ongoing feedback—increasing the chances of success.
Take, for example, the following slide, which is representative of the sorts of projects attendees chose to work on throughout the course. (We’ve anonymized some of the details for confidentiality.) For context, the visual came from an analyst at a large organization that recently conducted an advertising test to drive incremental orders. This was what one of their team members had compiled to show the results.
This slide was not driving the intended action that the creator had hoped for. Below, I share how the process we teach in the course was used to improve the effectiveness of this communication.
WEEK 1: THE ART OF FEEDBACK
The first topic in our course is “feedback,” because of its vital role in learning and skill development. We spend time understanding who and how to ask for useful input, practice giving thoughtful feedback to others, and start to see the value of developing a critical eye to improve our own work. Giving and receiving feedback is a big part of participating in the course itself.
Considering the advertising example above, we could tell our colleague that we appreciate the text and red boxes that emphasize what they wanted to highlight. Then, we could ask them if they considered visualizing some of the data, rather than showing everything in a table.
WEEK 2: GRAPHS
While suggesting visualizing the data is a good idea, it can be a daunting task for some, because there are many different types of graphs. In the second week of the course, we explore visuals. We focus mainly on those that are popular in business settings, but also offer avenues to learn about others that are less prevalent.
For example, below are several ways to highlight the increase in new customers during the advertising test.
WEEK 3: AUDIENCE & MESSAGE
We take a step back from graphs in the third week to assess the context of our communication. Specifically: who is our audience, and what do we need them to do? We learn about and practice identifying a specific audience, understanding their needs, and thoughtfully crafting our message.
In the advertising test scenario, our audience is a single person: the marketing manager. The big idea we want to communicate is: The aggressive ad spend test increased orders but at a markedly higher customer acquisition cost, so we recommend pausing to refine our targeting strategy for more efficient growth before resuming investment.
WEEK 4: LOW-TECH PLANNING
Halfway through the course, we introduce one of our favorite low-tech planning processes: storyboarding. Students develop, share, and get feedback on their storyboard for their course project from classmates in a small group setting. In our previous cohorts, this has often been a favorite exercise—participants begin to crystallize their thinking and hear reactions from an unfamiliar audience.
With our audience and message in mind, an initial storyboard for the advertising example first explains the test design and results, then offers a recommended next step.
WEEK 5: VISUAL DESIGN
We turn our attention back to graphs in the fifth week of the course, in which we learn how to take our visuals to the next level with the simple—yet powerful—design tactics.
After applying declutter and focus techniques, the original busy data table for the ad spend test is transformed into something more straightforward, giving us the opportunity to indicate where we want our audience to look.
WEEK 6: STORY
In week 6, we explore how to use concepts of storytelling for communicating effectively with data. Participants get an opportunity to apply these concepts as they iterate and get feedback on their storyboards.
Reconsidering our audience and the tension in our ad spend story, the original storyboard is rearranged into a narrative arc (visually represented below) that prioritizes the needs and interests of the audience.
WEEK 7: PRESENTATION PLANNING
During our penultimate week, we focus on building out the overall structure of the final presentation—bringing the low-tech strategies we’ve explored during the course to life using slideware applications.
Sticking with the corporate brand template and applying active takeaway slide titles, a digital skeleton for the ad test presentation starts to take shape.
WEEK 8: PRESENTING DATA STORIES
In our final week of the course, our primary focus is on you. As the narrator, you play a critical role in ensuring that the data stories that you build are communicated effectively and persuasively.
After refining the slide content and practicing the delivery, the final presentation for the ad spend results comes together. Here are the final slides and corresponding talking points:
“Hi everyone. Thanks for joining me today. The goal of the call is to discuss the findings from our recent ad test and use the results to inform our marketing strategy going forward.”
“Quick reminder: this is the question we set out to answer in the test: will higher ad spend yield more orders and acquire new customers?
The short answer is yes, we can get more orders, but this might not be our best approach to acquisition and growth. Let me explain…”
“Our test was aggressive—we spent 4x the baseline (pre-period) amount to assess the impact on orders compared to the prior period.”
“Let’s look at the order impact now.
We’ll consider three two-week periods here on the horizontal x-axis—the baseline period from March 22 to April 4 before the spending increase, compared to two testing periods (two weeks each) which had the increased investment.”
“For context, the baseline orders were 439. This is pretty consistent with prior weeks and the same period in prior years. For the test to be successful, we should see higher orders during the two testing periods…”
“...and we did see an 8% increase. This is a modest increase and lower than we hoped for, given the investment.
Despite this, there was an interesting finding when we looked at the type of customers. I’ll now break down each of these bars by new and existing customers.”
“To show this, I am going to switch to look at the percent of total orders in a 100% stacked bar chart.”
“As I layer on the data, we do see the mix of new customers was higher during the testing periods (almost double), which is great news!
However, it came at an added expense, and we saw our customer acquisition cost, or CAC, markedly increase during the testing period.”
“For context, we went from a CAC of $1.1K in the prior period up to…”
“....$2.2K during the testing periods. More new customers are great, but at double the cost?”
“So, to answer the original question: yes, more spending drives orders and brings new customers, but it drives up the CAC substantially. Therefore, we don’t think it's an efficient use of our marketing dollars. Instead, we recommend...”
“Pausing tests for now and developing better targeting strategies to more efficiently attract new customers.
Let’s discuss.”
Below, on the right, is a send-around summary slide of the ad spend story—check out the difference from the original!
Would you like the satisfaction of your own presentation transformation? We have a few remaining spots in our final cohort of 2025—starting on September 15. This is your opportunity to give yourself the time and space to develop your skills further and put them into practice.
Register for our upcoming 8-week online course by August 22, 2025 and enjoy an exclusive 25% discount. Spots are limited—secure your place today and don’t miss out!
