Five Creative Examples of Data-based Storytelling
Data isn’t the most friendly word — it usually brings to mind dizzying Excel sheets, rows of numbers, and incomprehensible charts. But at the heart of it, data tells stories. Hidden somewhere in all your files are human stories that can together showcase your impact as an organisation in truly meaningful ways.
When trying to showcase impact, it’s important to accept that human beings don’t really respond to numbers as they do to stories. A “25% increase in livelihood” is not as compelling as “the number of times this meant a child didn’t go to bed hungry”.
If we want people to be truly aware of the state of the world today, be it in terms of poverty, hunger, gender balance, or any of the other issues social organisations are trying to spread the word about — what we are asking is for regular, everyday people to understand and care about data. Problem is, unless this is part of their job, this isn’t something they’re going to be too excited about. Which means their opinions of countries, communities, and issues is at danger of being coloured by the narrative they are exposed to through the news they watch and the echo chamber of their Facebook feed.
One organisation that has data at the heart of what it does, and has succeeded in sparking people’s interest in it, isn’t a social organisation at all. It’s music streaming provider Spotify. They deep dive into the millions of clicks their app receive and pull out from it trends and insights that show the human behaviours behind the numbers. They use this to suggest tailored playlists based on your listening history, making users interested in their own data. And then they turn this data into stories, as they did so brilliantly in their recent end-of-year campaign, pulling out hyper-local stats displayed in public places to hilarious effect.
Here are my favourite examples of data-driven stories of social impact.
The UN uses Google search data to draw attention to sexism
Google has always been committed to making their search process as fast and seamless as possible, constantly iterating their algorithm and page structure to shave seconds or even milliseconds off how long it takes to get from search term to result. Autocomplete uses data to suggest popular searches, so we no longer even have to type in an entire search term to start seeing results.
Using this powerful database of what people are looking for, Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai created this simple but powerful campaign for UN Women, showing how alive and kicking sexism is in the world even today.
This is such a simple and great example of data-based storytelling. The Google search field screengrab, so familiar and easily identifiable, means the image simply speaks for itself. No explanation necessary. The design approach was almost to not design, except for the small detail of placing the search bar across the women’s mouths, metaphorically silencing their voices.
Perhaps the greatest impact of this story though is how it makes us feel — this isn’t data captured from a remote third world country or unknown community. This is us, all of us, contributing to this story of gender illiteracy.
The Wealth Gap for dummies
Occupy Wallstreet captured the world and everyone was talking about the wealth gap, social inequality, and the 1 percent-ers. But how can you help people really, truly understand a problem of numbers so large, it’s hard to wrap your head around?
Infographics have long been around, but this example of animating the graphics and showing rather than simply telling the problem, hits home for even the most financially unaware person. It brings large numbers down to representative figures and compares them in a few different ways to drive its point home. This is an amazing example of a large dataset being brought down to comprehensible images and figures, and the issue suddenly becomes really easy to understand.
The INEC builds data into their brand identity
This case study video begins with the core problem of most datasets — the INEC’s data was so vast, most people didn’t even care about it. To make the data alive, they did two things really well. One, bring the data down to five basic indicators of well being. Two, translate it into a simple image that can be understood at a glance. And going well beyond this, they integrated the resulting chart into their core identity.
This was a supremely innovative way to make data coherent and even allow citizens to interact with it through a multi-channel campaign. Data suddenly went from a clinical list of numbers to a symbol of hope and change.
Combining data and technology to make change
Armchair activism has been much criticised — it is too easy to send a Tweet or sign an online petition. But what if these same actions could help bring real change? The Peruvian Red Cross encouraged citizens to turn their blood type into a hashtag, and posting it automatically entered them into the central blood donor registry. That’s it.
This is an inspiring use of technology and data to encourage positive action and engage citizens without asking them to do anything outside their behaviour set.
Trends from the Crisis Text Line database help teens in trouble
Crisis Text Line’s first hire was a data scientist, meaning data was built into the model right from the start. Data analysis was used to prioritise the thousands of text messages coming in and decide which ones needed immediate attention. The method was simple — any text containing the word “today” went to the top of the list to help reach teens at the time of crisis. Words and phrases like “I want to die” or “rape” were red flags. Co-relating content with timing, Crisis Text Line has been able to find trends like, Monday is the worst day of the week for eating disorders, or that counsellors who were lesbians or vets received the most responses to their messages of outreach. All of this data is available for other organisations, journalists, researchers and others on their website as simple, interactive charts. So the data isn’t just trapped in Excel sheets but being used as an active and ever-changing participant in the problem-solving process.
Special Mention! Hans Rosling frees data from databases
I could not end this piece without a special shout-out to data scientist Hans Rosling whose colourful, interactive graphics and enthusiastic approach to statistics blew people away. Rosling pinpointed the problem with databases in three words — expensive, boring, difficult. His solution? Connect data to design. Something he has done at his initiative GapMinder, providing open source tools to create data visualisations. Watch his Ted Talk to see it in action!
What can organisations learn from these examples?
- Pictures speak a thousand words — it isn’t just an aphorism, it’s true. Colours, images and icons make it easier to convey a story than words and columns of numbers. This could be a simple chart like the Live Logo or an animated sequence like the Wealth Gap video, and anything in between.
- Reduce big numbers down to representative figures — Most people don’t really understand the difference between a million and a trillion. It’s just a Big Number. How can you break figures down when working with big data?
- Think of immediate practical application — Data is useless unless it’s being applied and feeding back into your processes. How can you parse through numbers, tease out patterns and stories, and then put them back to work?
- Use technology to power your data stories — turn a table into an infographic via tools like Visual.ly and Canva. Use social media aggregators like Flavors.me and RebelMouse (full disclosure: I worked as a product manager at RebelMouse until mid 2016) to compile data from social media. Work with animators and developers to make trends and changes over time come alive.
- Behind every number is a human being — This is perhaps the most important lesson of all. What each of these examples has done well is turn the numbers into stories of actual human beings and relayed them in ways other humans can empathise with.
I’d love to hear about your favourite data-driven stories or about your own organisation’s data-based campaigns in the comments below!
