Storytelling with Data | Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic | Talks at Google 

Love this talk and took some notes on each of the key points I found... 00:14 - Introduction 01:35 - Cole's role in People Analyics at Google 03:56 - Overview of workshops and the book 04:31 - How to shift attention towards the story you want to tell 05:04 - How to make sure your story doesn't get lost in the data 05:53 - How to draw focus to important insights with data 07:28 - The distrinction between exploratory and explanatory analysis 08:25 - How focusing attention had an impact at Google 09:29 - The eye/brain mechanics of vision and visual communication 10:13 - Hands-on exercise: Preattentitve processing with iconic memory 11:30 - List of preattentive attributes and when to use them 13:16 - How to know if you are using preattentive attributes strategically 16:06 - Before and after example of using color as a preattentive attribute 18:30 - Converting facts into story with a fairy tale example 22:28 - Three components to consider when crafting your narative with data 23:25 - Real life example of crafting a story from survey data 29:00 - Start of Q&A session 29:48 - How life has changed for Cole after leaving Google 30:45 - Cole's inspiration for writing "Storytelling with Data" 31:16 - When to add interactivity to your data visualization (and when not to) 33:00 - How dashboards differ drastically from explanatory data visualizations 34:53 - Cole's recommended resources for storytelling with data 36:32 - What to be aware of when designing for different cultures 37:59 - Tips for creating a meaningful story from lots of different data 40:59 - Cole's most difficult part of writing "Storytelling with Data" 41:49 - The two most important things to take away from this talk 42:48 - What was Cole's favorite chapter in "Storytelling with Data" 43:41 - Why anyone that communicates with data needs "Storytelling with Data" 44:30 - Competing opinions within the data visualization community 49:00 - Why the fundamentals of data visualization probably won't change any time soon 51:20 - How organizations can "level up" storytelling with data

The camera should have given more time for us to look at the slides while she talked about them, now I have to keep pausing the video. The talk was 100%, she is definitely good at this.

Her methodology and approach is exactly why I want my career to be centered around analytics

My favourite author! Mrs. Knaflic. She's definitely giving us the guidelines in delivering great presentation! Thanks So much. I bought your book at Periplus (one of the import bookshop in Indonesia). Very worth to read it, guys!

Great talk Cole! I very applicable information and points -- I always learn something from hearing you talk. I'm glad this was recorded and shared. The book looks beautiful. I know we have a few copies around the office; I especially look forward to reading the storytelling chapter.

28:30 Ha - attitudes have changed about how Google is viewed now ... but in any case this video was very good. Thought the dude at the beginning couldn't resist some passive aggression about his pie charts being knocked back (Cole was totally correct, dude)

Excellent, super useful guidance on how data can help tell your stories. No pie charts!

This kind of event that shared in free platform make me loved google and another "big" company. They enabling me as person to dig about science or whatever we called that very costly if we seek it by ourself. Thank you for sharing.

I'm currently reading the book; "Storytelling with data" so seeing this workshop is perfect timing

Great insights, I really like your tips on colour, use it thoughtfully and your data should always tell a story. It's just not about beautiful visuals but it's about the story.

Bought the Kindle book. Watched the video. I'm usually easily distracted while watching "educational" videos, even if they're about a subject dear to me. Not this time. It was also interesting to see that Googlers (Googlers?!) seem pretty much like the rest of us.

Great ! Presentation even though it's 5 years old Video I think basic concepts discussed still holds true.

Great talk! I benefit from the speech a lot ! This book is published in Taiwan too. I'm really glad I bought this book! 深入淺出，很多案例，讚一個!

To address the comment made that slides did not stay on the screen long enough for viewers to enjoy Cole's speech, I have gathered the ins and outs points for the before and after graphic slides. Clicking on the numbers in blue will take you straight to that frame on the video :) 4:36 >>> 5:02 5:10 >>> 5:45 6:07 >>> 6:47 12:25 >>> 12:58 15:28 >>> 15:54 16:13 >>> 16:49 23:27 >>> 25:48 Enjoy!

I sense her nervousness, . when this happens it is better to talk slowly, leisurely, and pause. breathe slowly and look far away or have visualize the room with you in it within the wider area whichever it is. I think she's excited to talk. also rather than just focusing on stressing out the point, stress out the words as well, this will make you sound less nervous and more confident.

Great approach. Very engaging and simply delivered

I read the book before watching…great book . The video was helpful in seeing her share key lessons .

The point is to use data and then apply it visually to tell the story? So why was the camera on a person speaking and so briefly focused on the graphs? Literally, she announced a graph that she was discussing. I glanced to the screen, and it was already trained back on her maddening.

Great presentation and information on storytelling with data. The examples are very helpful to understand the concepts.

Some really useful information there, would have been nice if the edit had given us more time looking at the slides while Cole was speaking though. Found myself pausing this a lot which sort of ruined the flow of the talk a bit.

Pink sign & "eyes scan right and down" - is that "...in European language cultures"? - Would it be the same for cultures whose written tradition is oriented in other directions?" I've done some informal questioning for Arab users in project management specific contexts and they say they work L-R because they only do PM in an internationalised setting where the business language is English - I'd expect 'learning to read' sets a powerful learned habit as the normal-mode for scanning the visually perceived world

I do remember second grade math so well because I used to ask myself, "what is it with all these pie illustrations?" I just filtered them out so I could work the problems.

super-useful tips on how data can help tell your stories, loved the presentation.

Fantastic presentation!! Thank you for sharing this with the rest of the world

Thanks - very interesting comments on Exploratory Analysis vs Explanatory Analysis, I'd never really thought of it that way.

Great talk Cole, thanks for sharing !

very great presentation, i love it

Great talk .Extremely insightful.However, I would say you are also a very good example of how effective good visuals can be in catching audience's attention 😋❤

I really enjoyed this talk! Pretty enlightening for me. Thank you and congratulations.

Amazing!!

Great content! but it was not captured appropriately. most of the time, i had to pause the video when the slides were shown to understand the concept. split screen would have helped big time!

Great talk. Now I gotta read the book.

Loved the take-away from the speaker. However, the camera-man needs to take lessons on "Know your audience"...Those of us watching at home lost out on some of these lessons because the camera was focused on the speaker and not focused on the areas the audience needed to see on the slides. If you need a good camera-man - I have a reference. @CactusPatchProductions, LLC

Dashboards and modern interactive data bases are drill down tools that managers like to use to keep tight control on things. Sophisticated regression tools, however, are exploratory that can be used to identify processes and dynamics. Sad, managers typically don't grasp the power of exploratory tools in the right hands.

Her voice is shivering

great information

That's really interesting. 😍

Very good!

Google does have a lot to offer in terms of collecting data. Don't lose any opportunity to leverage your analysis using their resources.

Anybody read the book?

It's Great!!

great!

WOW

Capitalism at its peak. This video sold me both of her books.

wowwww

At 6:30 - Those are Bears colors- that's why any Green and Gold-blooded Packers fan would say, "yuck." :-)

Great information. Her voice is shaking with nervousness

Amm... Amm.. Amm

damn

Pathetic Videographer or Editor. Just dosent know when to focus on speaker and when to focus on the screen.

Oh my God, she is the most boring speaker...

I don't think she was nervous as lots of comments are implying. She is pregnant and out of breath.

Amazing!!

Slow the video down to 0.75. You're welcome 😉

Excellent! Just got the book today - really looking forward to diving into this in more detail. Thanks, Cole and Google.

Tremendously helpful talk. I better tone down on the pie charts. Thanks for sharing this wisdom!

7 years went by and this is still brilliant!

One of the best talks on data viz and also because its one of my passions too.

She's talking with no stop how the hell the information that provides can be processed with no stop.

very helpful, thank you so much!!

Very Strong Presentation Skills.

The students and science visual comparison is good. However, you need to watch out for those who’ll change your story. For example, I could also just focus my story on the “OK” grouping and say we were soooo unsuccessful because, just look! The “OK” fell off. (Happy to note that I didn’t cover all the data points but we should all keep that in mind that someone else might try to corrupt our story.)

Ela é realmente excelente

Awesome. Watching it 7 years later. Has she done Data Viz 2.0? Probably need more dynamic/interactive data viz.

Integrates basic but powerful user design concepts with the power of storytelling. LIked the Q&A part of the video

Eyes are part of the brain, exposed outside of the skull. Dr. Huberman has a great talk on that topic.

Thanks Cole, You are a great inspiration for me!!!

I got here from a Udacity course.

Slow down. Breathe.

it was soooo fast :(

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Come on Googlers! Don't be so quiet! She was doing great!

I really want to watch this video but her nervousness makes it hard to listen to. I know how nerve wracking it can be to speak in front of people. I hope she has gotten more comfortable with it since this presentation.

Maybe it is a useful talk, but for me absolutely impossible to listen to, will read the book.

seems like speaker is having difficulty in breathing.

She is sooo nervous that I can help myself from feeling uncomfortable, besides her efforts to mentions her husband every x minutes as a poor trick to connect with the audience...

Wow this is exactly what I was looking for! And I learned something I didn't know I needed to know, when she said great visualization won't beat a lousy story. But a great story with lousy data visualization will still get the point across persuasively.