2025-06-26 04:46:56
Recently, I had the privilege of speaking alongside my fellow data storyteller and author Alex Velez at the Outlier Conference, an annual event organized by the Data Visualization Society. This article is adapted from the talk we delivered there.
Everyone who works with data has encountered difficult audiences from time to time. You know who we mean: people who challenge the data at every turn, for instance; or folks who are resistant to ideas that conflict with their own assumptions.
This can be both frustrating and disheartening, especially when we devote so much time (and our professional careers) to diligently and conscientiously analyzing and sharing insights we find in that data.
If you’ve felt this way, we empathize. We’d like to share two different approaches that we’ve found to be useful for breaking through this frustration and disappointment.
…because if we can’t reach people, the rest doesn’t matter. These techniques are useful for connecting with our audiences and convincing them to value what we have to offer.
In moments when trust is low and skepticism is high, data alone isn’t going to carry the day. It’s critical to step back and put yourself in your audience’s shoes. Instead of starting from your perspective, or the “data’s perspective,” lead with empathy. Demonstrate that you’ve thought about the people you’re presenting to, and the people you’re presenting about. If your data affects people, which it often does, then people belong at the center of how you frame it.
That doesn’t mean putting emotions ahead of facts—it means recognizing that emotions are part of the equation. Emotional intelligence matters, even when the data and the facts support your position. A little humanity goes a long way in helping people feel seen—and when someone feels seen, they’re more likely to listen.
As a presenter, making that connection with your audience is critical. Remember, though, that there may also be other trust gaps to address. Frequently, data conversations start from a place of disagreement: factions of people in the same room butting heads over competing beliefs and interpretations.
If we anticipate disharmony among our audience members, whether in their interests, beliefs, goals, or motivations, we can look for common ground. Scan the room and ask yourself, why are we all here? What do we all care about, even if we have different ways of showing it? More often than not, we can agree on basic values or goals—things like fairness, opportunity, and stability. If we root our stories in those shared values, we reduce defensiveness and create space for dialogue.
In some cases, we find ourselves presenting to folks who are skeptical of data as a rule, whether it’s rooted in a belief in the old “lies, damn lies, and statistics” cliché, or just the natural wariness that comes from having been burned by misleading or inaccurate analyses. An effective approach here is to combine the qualitative with the quantitative in your presentation—blend stats and story.
It should not be a surprise that a data storyteller at storytelling with data suggests this approach. But it’s true! We don’t have to choose between quantitative data and a compelling narrative. We need both. A story brings structure and meaning to our message, and reminds people that numbers aren’t the point—people are. (Or, in the example we used at the conference, people and dogs are…Alex shared a case study from our upcoming book about how dog owners make decisions about the kibble they buy.)
Story reminds us what matters, and data adds credibility. When we combine them, we make our communication engaging and memorable.
Still, even with the best intentions, we’re not always going to have perfect clarity. Sometimes the data is incomplete. Sometimes it contradicts itself. Trying to pretend otherwise does more harm than good. There’s power in admitting uncertainty. It shows maturity and builds trust. Yes, it’s important to be precise, but it’s more important to be transparent. Credibility is predicated on a long and unassailable track record of honesty, and that includes admitting the boundaries of our expertise.
Incidentally, during a panel discussion at the conference, three people were asked, “In the age of increasing use of AI, and more and more difficulty in assessing the provenance of the work we see, what makes you likely to trust a visualization?” Two of the three people answered, “If I know the person who created it,” and the third answered, “If they are transparent about their process and the source of their data.” Credibility, honesty, and transparency will be key factors in your future efforts to persuade audiences with data.
Four ways to bridge the trust gap: lead with empathy; find common ground among your audience’s factions; blend stories and stats for enhanced openness and engagement; and admit the limits of your expertise.
But let’s be honest with ourselves. Even when we connect. Even when we do everything “right,” it can still feel like we’re shouting into the wind. We’ve all had runs of weeks, months, or even years with intermittent positive feedback at best, and even rarer obvious wins. So how do you stay motivated?
For us, it starts with redefining what success looks like. Not every win is going to be big or obvious. Sometimes it’s a single moment of clarity—someone finally understanding a complex issue because of how you explained it. Sometimes it’s planting a seed that doesn’t sprout for weeks or months. That still counts. That’s still you making an impact.
It also helps to give yourself permission to celebrate slow progress. Be consistent, durable, and conscientious in your efforts. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can do is pause, take stock, and do one thing well. Repairing trust, building understanding—these things take time. And that’s okay. Slow progress is still better than no progress, and is far better than just giving up.
Remember, too, that not all impact is visible. Any room always has a few loud people in it, and it’s not uncommon that we overindex on responding to their opinions and reactions. Instead of focusing on them, speak to the quiet ones in the room. There’s always someone paying attention. Maybe they’re not the loudest voices, but they hear you just as clearly (if not more so) than the talkers. They see how you carry yourself, how you respond to questions, how you stand firm when you’re challenged. The behavior you model has an impact on people who may never tell you about it. But even in silence, they may be taking it all to heart and carrying it forward. That matters.
Through it all, though, the thing that can sustain you the most is finding and protecting what brings you joy in your work. For me, it’s speaking to a group of people, and seeing that spark in them when a messy idea finally clicks, or how they get excited when they realize during one of our workshops some specific way they can immediately and dramatically improve their day-to-day work products. For you, it might be something else: solving a challenging visual puzzle; mentoring a newer professional; hearing unexpected positive feedback; or getting buy-in on a meaningful initiative. Identifying, remembering, and cherishing those moments can sustain us through the moments when it feels like no one is listening to what we’re saying.
Techniques for staying motivated include: redefining success to include smaller victories; celebrating progress on a different time scale; focusing on the impact one has on the quieter people, rather than the loud ones; and identifying and protecting the aspects of your work that have always given you joy.
Our role is to show up with clarity, empathy, and transparency—to help people make better decisions from data and drive positive change. Our daily actions need to reflect our commitment to this idea. Sometimes progress feels slow or invisible, but that is the nature of progress—it is neither predictable nor linear. Whether impact happens in the moment or months later, building trust is a long game. The way we communicate today shapes how others engage with data tomorrow—and that’s what makes the work worth doing.
2025-06-10 23:27:21
One common feature of the iterative process is that things often get messier before they get better. There’s a word for that illusion that everything always improves in a linear way: monotonic. But real progress often has a lot more ups and downs than a straight line.
Let me show you what I mean.
We’ll start with a table (borrowed from the virtual mini-workshop I’m planning for 6/26). It shows evaluation results across four suppliers. It’s rich with data: we can see how each supplier performed across the five dimensions (initial setup, overall operation, functionality, ease of use, patient satisfaction) and on average. But as a visual, it doesn’t help us quickly grasp the key takeaway.
So let’s graph it. This is categorical data, so I’ll opt for a bar chart. The test metrics are a little wordy, so I’ll use the horizontal variety, where the text also is oriented horizontally, making those descriptors easy to read. Below is my initial graph. It’s a direct translation of the table into visual form.
It’s an honest first try—but dense, colorful, and hard to compare. Let’s continue to iterate.
Next, I’ll regroup the data by supplier.
At this point, I am reminded of Bob Ross. Perhaps you know the moment I’m thinking of from The Joy of Painting: he’s calmly painting a serene landscape, it’s starting to look good, and then—seemingly out of nowhere—he swipes a bold, dark line down the canvas. Gasp! Why did he ruin it?!
But he hasn’t.
With a bit of time, that unexpected line becomes the happy little tree in the foreground that brings the whole painting to life.
This bar graph is my dark streak. It doesn’t look better yet—there’s too much color, too many bars. It’s challenging to compare much of anything. It might even feel like a step backwards.
But that’s part of the process. Because with a few thoughtful tweaks, clarity can emerge.
I’ll eliminate clutter, streamline colors, add words in thoughtfully placed places to make the graph—and what I want people to take away from it—perfectly clear.
Depending on the situation, I might be able to distill the detail even further and simply plot the averages, rather than the individual dimension detail.
In either case, the data has been transformed into something more.
This example is one of several that I’ll walk through during my upcoming free live virtual mini-workshop on June 26th. Join me to learn practical strategies for turning data into compelling visual stories and get your questions answered. Simply register to join.
In the meantime, if you’d like to consider how you might transform this or related visuals—or see how others are approaching it—check out the June SWD challenge.
This example is from our new book, which features twenty client-inspired makeovers designed to help you rethink how you communicate with data. Preorder it today!
2025-05-29 23:33:27
Have you ever sat through a presentation that just felt disjointed, where the presenter jumped from one idea to the next without warning, leaving you wondering how everything fit together? Even the most interesting insights can be overshadowed by a delivery where the content feels unrelated.
Everybody knows that it’s important to plan out what’s on your slides. What often gets overlooked is how critical it is to plan out what’s between the slides as well. Your transitions are the bridges that connect one idea to the next in a presentation, ensuring the message flows logically and cohesively, making it easier for the audience to follow along and stay engaged, rather than confused and overwhelmed.
In this article, I’ll share some practical ways to polish both your verbal delivery and your slide content to ensure your next presentation is smooth and engaging.
When presenting live, your spoken words play a critical role in shifting between slides. Are you about to dive deeper into the details, zoom out for a broader view, or change topics entirely? Use specific language to let your audience know where you’re headed next, so it’s easy to follow along.
If you’re about to introduce a new concept, it’s important to make the transition feel logical, rather than abrupt. Use words that connect the dots between ideas. Phrases like “let’s shift gears and discuss…” and “now that we’ve covered [X], let’s move on to [Y]…” expressly tell your audience something different is coming.
When expanding on a point or diving into more detailed information, use something like “let’s take a closer look at…” and “to illustrate this point further…” to help guide them from a high-level concept to more granular details.
When it’s time to summarize or offer recommendations, consider language that explains to your audience that you are wrapping up. “To summarize what we’ve covered so far…” and “let’s revisit the main takeaways…” are some ways to do this.
Simply by weaving these verbal phrases into your delivery, you can create a thoughtful flow that feels more like a conversation and less like a lecture.
Transitions aren’t just about what you say—they’re also about what your audience sees. Your visual content and your verbal delivery should be connected in a manner that enhances understanding and engagement.
Here are some easy ways to make your slides visually support transitions between ideas.
Craft clear, active takeaway slide titles that align with your verbal transitions. For example, if you’re shifting topics, ensure the new slide title reflects the change. This reinforces the narrative and helps your audience stay oriented. When scanning through the slide sorter view of your presentation, the titles should serve as a roadmap of your presentation. If you’ve done this well, then with every new slide you put in front of your audience, its title will be a perfect signpost for the idea that is coming next.
Incorporate focusing techniques and visual cues, like sparing color and thoughtful annotations, to support your talking points and signal transitions visually. You can also add subtle animations for emphasis without overwhelming the audience. Not only does this direct attention to where you think it should be paid, but it will help remind you of the points you intended to make, and in what order.
Ensure a consistent design throughout your presentation, keeping fonts, colors, and layouts orderly and intentional. This tactic is less about making sure you’re emphasizing your transition and more about de-emphasizing the things that aren’t meant to change. If each successive slide had new layouts, colors, and fonts, it would be overwhelming for a viewer to deal with. By reining that in and calming down the design, you’ll provide a sense of continuity that supports smoother transitions between slides, because any visible change will now be pertinent to the new topic or level of focus.
Let’s consider an example. Recently, I was working with an online education provider who collected negative feedback from students about various aspects of their digital learning experience across four different courses. Below are two sequenced slides included in the original presentation.
The slide on the left shows the negative feedback by category for all four courses, while the slide on the right presents the student responses broken by both category and the associated course. This switch to a different view was jarring in the original deck, and confusing since there wasn’t consistency in how color was being applied.
To make the shift between these slides easier and more straightforward, we reworked things using the transition tips outlined above. The following verbal and visual transitions were added to guide the audience.
Here, we are looking at the negative feedback categories from recent students' responses. You can see the volume varies across each category.
Transition (focusing attention): There are some aspects that stand out as having more negative feedback.
Specifically, the three largest bars at the top are related to course navigation, the mobile app, and access and login challenges. These account for 65% of the negative feedback we received.
Transition (we’re going to dive deeper): This is an aggregated view of the overall feedback, but when we look at the course level, we start to see some differences. Let me add that information now.
Here, the bars are broken down across the four courses reviewed. The view is a little busy and hard to compare across categories, given the differing amounts of feedback received.
Transition (expanding on a point): Let’s switch views to look at the percent of total across categories to make comparisons easier.
I’ve stretched the bars out to a 100% horizontal stacked bar chart, while keeping the order the same, so the categories on the top represent the largest volume.
Transition (focusing attention): Looking at the top three categories, the percentages are roughly the same for each course.
This tells us that these are global issues we need to address for all courses.
Transition (focusing attention): However, when we consider other categories, this is not true. For example, if you look at instructor support and content quality, two courses stand out.
Most of the negative feedback received for instructor support and content quality came from Course 1 and Course 2.
Transition (offering recommendations): This means that targeted improvements to content and instructor support for these two specific courses should improve student feedback.
Adding slides provided a smoother change between the two aspects of the story. The visual changes, coupled with verbal phrases, connect the information to make what was previously an abrupt change into a more fluid sequence.
Thoughtful transitions are essential for delivering an engaging and professional presentation. When you plan ahead—incorporating both verbal cues and visual elements—you ensure that your ideas flow seamlessly from one point to the next. With practice and preparation, these techniques will not only enhance clarity but also leave a lasting impression of confidence and credibility.
2025-05-13 23:26:00
A: Lunch-and-learns, fellowship groups, book clubs, and cookouts are this type of opportunity to improve your presentation skills.
Q: What are “low-stakes environments”?
Last week, towards the end of an immersive, full day workshop, we were in the middle of a lesson about speaking with confidence. As the third step of our plan-create-deliver roadmap for a stellar presentation, it’s the part of communicating effectively with data that can feel the most daunting, and also the one many folks are least eager to practice.
Getting comfortable delivering any one specific talk, I was telling the group, is easier with some intentional practice.
For instance, it’s helpful to verbalize what you plan to cover while reviewing your full slide deck in thumbnail format.
Then, when you have an idea of your main talking points, focus in by going through one slide at a time to find the flow and key phrases within each one.
Finally, deliver your talk with the laptop fully closed, as you gain more and more familiarity and mastery of your material. (This doesn’t mean memorizing every word you’ll say; just be comfortable that you’ve got a strong knowledge on the order and themes you’ll deliver from start to finish.)
It was at this point that one of our workshop attendees—let’s call him Lee—said, “That’s great for ONE presentation. But how do we get more comfortable with ANY presentation? How do we build our skills, and our confidence, in public speaking more generally?”
“Ah,” I replied. “Like anything else, public speaking gets easier the more we do it. But the idea of public speaking causes so much anxiety for so many people that we tend not to look for chances to do it. That’s why we suggest finding low-stakes environments in which to practice.”
“OK,” said Lee, “but what are these low-stakes environments? It never feels like anything at work is low-stakes.”
And boy, isn’t that the truth? Sometimes it can feel like everything is a fifteen-alarm fire with the future of the entire company hanging in the balance. But the good news is that low-stakes environments for speaking in public are all around us.
Here’s your author preparing to host a trivia night on July 4th (hence the red, white, and blue outfit).
Personally, I am a fan of pub trivia. (Or any trivia, really.) Every year I take the Jeopardy! contestant test, I play in LearnedLeague, and over the past year, I’ve started hosting trivia nights in a few places in and around my hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota.
It turns out that running a pub trivia game is an excellent example of a low-stakes environment in which to practice public speaking! You have questions and answers provided for you, people are there to play the game so they’re excited, attentive, and upbeat, and all you have to do is hold a microphone and help them have a good time for 90 minutes or so.
Nobody’s going to lose a client or make a million-dollar mistake as a result of your hosting. For me, it’s a perfect low-stakes way to stay sharp, comfortable, and confident in front of a crowd.
Low stakes environments like this are all around us. They most often come from combining a personal interest with a small, supportive crowd. If trivia hosting isn’t your thing, how about these options?
Fellowship groups at your place of worship—you could lead a discussion, offer a reading, or just speak up during a group conversation. These are natural, low-pressure spaces to practice talking about meaningful topics.
Volunteering at libraries, schools, or senior centers—anyone can handle reading to kids, right? You could give that a shot, or help run an event (might we suggest Daphne’s Data Detectives?), or share some of your other experiences. Not only do you get practice, you’ll often be doing so in front of small, grateful groups.
Joining a book club—A built-in audience! You get to speak regularly on a shared topic, with folks who are interested, supportive, and happy to hear your take. This can be fun even if (especially if) everyone flat-out hated the book.
Cookouts or parties—Telling a story to a friend at a backyard BBQ? That counts. Any time you’re speaking to a group—no matter the setting—you’re building comfort. And, it gives you a better window into your own storytelling style. What feels natural? How do you use your voice, your body, or your audience in the telling? These are great things to find out as you develop your professional speaking voice.
Lunch-and-learns at work—Sharing your expertise with coworkers is a great way to get reps in. It’s low-risk and helps you build your voice in a familiar environment, and can bridge the gap from personal-public speaking to professional-public speaking.
Remember, fellow introverts—here are a few things I wish I’d known back when I was anxious and nervous about public speaking:
Ask yourself honestly: is the anxiety coming from the act of speaking, or from fear of the unknown? For most of us, it’s the latter. The more chances you take to speak in front of people, the more normal it’ll feel—and the more in control you’ll be. If you prepare, you’ll feel more confident.
Follow the old coach’s rule: “Practice how you’ll play.” Stand up when you practice if you’ll be standing when you present. Check out the room ahead of time. Give yourself a few minutes to settle in. And try on the clothes you plan to wear—just to make sure they still fit. (Mine seem to keep shrinking...)
Everyone in the room wants you to succeed. They’re already on your side and genuinely want to hear what you have to say. Repay that goodwill by sharing what you know, with the care and clarity it deserves.
Allow me to close with a lyric from a song I first encountered on the psychedelic children’s program “Yo Gabba Gabba,” featuring the artist “I’m From Barcelona:”
Just because it’s different, doesn’t mean it’s scary
Just because it’s different, doesn’t mean you have to be afraid
Just because it’s different, doesn’t mean it’s scary
New things in life can be great
Try new things
So go ahead, Lee (and everyone)—say yes to that lunch-and-learn, offer to lead your book club next time, or test your mic skills at trivia night. The more chances you take to speak in low-stakes settings, the more natural it’ll feel when the stakes are higher. Turns out, confidence isn't something you're born with—it's something you build, one small, unscary step at a time.
2025-04-23 07:46:20
Our current #SWDchallenge has been on my mind. For those who don't know, we pose a different monthly suggestion for community members to build their data visualization and presentation skills. It could be a prompt to try a novel graph type, redesign an existing example, or practice a specific technique like chart animation. This month, data storyteller Simon asked us to consider whether data always needs to be communicated in a graph. Simon shares, "When you have just a number or two, writing the numbers themselves can be much more powerful than burying them in a table or graph and potentially losing the impact of the main number you're looking to share."
This statement came to mind when I reviewed a chart over the weekend. The chart I’m referring to is a bar graph displaying the weekly weight measurements of my dog, Nemo.
Given how sterile this graph appears, you might be surprised to learn that these basic bars elicited a few tears, mostly happy ones. I was so excited about this data that I wanted to share the graph with my friends and family, but I knew the chart wouldn’t have the same impact.
Nemo is a recent addition to our family; we adopted him four months ago. He is a five-year-old mixed breed with a large frame. For reference, he's approximately 25 inches from his shoulders to the base of his tail. By many standards, this classifies him as a large dog. While different breeds vary in weight, you would expect him to weigh at least 50 pounds, based on his frame. As you can see from the bar graph, when Nemo first came home from the shelter, he was 36.2 pounds—severely underweight, with several health issues.
My primary focus over the last few months has been to help him gain weight. I worked closely with his vet to track his weight by bringing him to the office for weekly check-ins. This gave me plenty of data to analyze his progress.
Unfortunately, one of the byproducts of being a data storyteller is that I can’t help but critique charts, whether watching the news or waiting at the vet office. Coming back to the original bar chart, I decided some of the data provided in the pet portal needed a makeover. I removed the border and gridlines. The vertical axis was also deleted, as it was repetitive given the data labels above each bar. Additionally, I made the bars wider so they would be easier to scan across. All of these changes are reflected in the chart below.
This is a simpler graph than the original, but it still doesn’t quite convey the story of Nemo’s recovery. I decided to try a different approach: a line chart.
The line chart has a few advantages over the bar chart. It’s visually lighter with just a single line compared to the nine bars in the original view. This change makes the graph appear more straightforward, even though it contains the same number of data points. Also, there is plenty of extra space around the line, which I filled with annotations. It’s amazing how words can bring data to life!
This got me thinking. If I want to share Nemo’s progress, why do I need a graph? Whether I used bars, lines, annotations, or played with the formatting, the message continued to get lost in the chart. This is a feel-good story about how Nemo, a dog who didn’t have the best start to life, has a second chance. And in a relatively short amount of time, he’s starting to thrive, not just survive.
Taking a cue from Simon’s challenge, I decided to play around with words and images.
This is a view that I know my friends and family will rejoice at! It's strange to think that a simple statement containing a single number and two pictures can provide more insight than an entire data set of detailed measurements. Graphs are powerful tools for communicating information, but they can sometimes overcomplicate things and deprive the reader of emotionally connecting to the data.
Don’t get me wrong, in many cases, a good graph can do wonders to improve a presentation or report. But it’s important to remember that just because you have data, it doesn’t mean you need a graph. Always think about the message and impact you want to have on your audience; choose a visual that will support that. If you want to explore when words might be better than a graph, there is still time to complete this month's challenge in the community: keep it simple (with text).
On a related note, if you enjoy learning via example, get excited for our new book coming this fall: storytelling with data: before and after. We share twenty powerful makeovers—in our traditional before-and-after format—that illustrate practical lessons like how to find the right level of detail, why you shouldn’t tell stories with dashboards, and the core principles that lead to a well-designed slide. Nemo’s makeover didn’t happen in time for the book, but this simple text transformation is one I’m quite proud of!
2025-04-17 04:54:51
"You can write, but you can't edit."
That lyric, from one of my favorite Regina Spektor songs, has been echoing in my mind lately. I’m pretty sure it’s meant as a dig—and honestly, I get it. Editing is hard.
I’m deep in the editing trenches right now, doing the final read-through of our upcoming book, storytelling with data: before & after. This time, I’ve printed the pages out. There’s something different—almost grounding—about reading and correcting by hand. You turn each page. You circle with pen. You stick little notes to flag every tiny change. The process demands focus. It’s tactile. It’s slow. It’s deliberate.
And it’s exhausting.
It takes a ton of energy to go through material you’ve seen so many times with fresh eyes—to keep spotting opportunities for improvement and issues that somehow slipped through earlier rounds. But I fully believe that this painstaking attention to detail, both in the words and the visuals, is what transforms a good product into a great one.
In a way, the process mirrors what we teach. A meta-lesson in before & after is just this: editing is essential. We help our clients look at their graphs, slides, and stories with new eyes. We coach them through iteration, refinement, clarity. It's in the editing that data stories truly come to life.
So while Regina might be right that writing is easier than editing, I’ve learned that embracing the hard parts is what makes the final product shine.
Our new book, storytelling with data: before & after, is coming soon—preorder now if you’d like to be among the first to see the results of all this editing.
