Posted by Ajay Kelkar on Mon, May 21, 2012
Storytelling with Data is becoming much more common today because of both vast amounts of data being available in the public space & also the emergence of a newer breed of younger, more “social” professionals who consume such data with far more ease!
But is the corporate world looking at data like this? Are analytics teams creating powerful data visualizations to tell their stories! Can they afford not to?
At Cequity, our model is unique because it tries to integrate very contrasting dimensions into one entity where the sum is larger than the parts! Having a designer’s sense with data may contrast with a statistician’s dry look at numbers! We seek “intersection” skills-intersection of Creative, technology, data & business! Not easy to do with highly talented people & we are attempting it!
The interesting thing is that journalism is getting far savvier with data! I see visual data based story telling in the New York Times that is absolutely mind boggling. Even here in India, I see some lovely data visualization in the Mint!
But are analysts getting creative with their story telling? Visualization of data is getting democratized & it is not very difficult for analysts to be creative about this. Today we as consumers are getting far savvier about technology in our personal lives & that will impact our expectations at the work place. I am sure that savvy consumers will make data presentation so much more fun even within “enterprises”.
Turning data into understandable, graphical communication is a difficult task but today you have a plethora of free tools that you can use! . Visual.ly is building some of these interesting tools. I tried to use my creativity with Visual.ly & looked at my twitter behaviour & compare it to my favourite Bollywood film actress-Gul Panag! It took me two minutes to produce this Infographic! Imagine if we presented data in interesting ways at work!
Here is something wonderful from Stanford from GEOFF McGHEE. He is an online journalist specializing in multimedia and information graphics.
Journalists are coping with the rising information flood by borrowing data visualization techniques from computer scientists, researchers and artists. Some newsrooms are already beginning to retool their staffs and systems to prepare for a future in which data becomes a medium. But how do we communicate with data, how can traditional narratives be fused with sophisticated, interactive information displays?
http://datajournalism.stanford.edu/