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Summary

Storytelling is about making your research more accessible to your audience by letting your visualisation tell a story, and not just describe objects.
A very basic way of applying principles of storytelling is making sure that your visuals have a clear reading order, to make it easier for your audience to navigate the content.

When designing visualisations, narrative, or storytelling, is the ability of a single image or collection of images to tell a story and not just describe objects. Ideally, data storytelling will make it easier for your audience to understand and engage with your research findings. While much is still unknown about the effectiveness of using storytelling in visualisations, this aspect is nonetheless worth considering.

What's in a story?

There are numerous ways of telling a story, and the basic structure of a typical story may vary among different cultures. Furthermore, stories may have many different purposes: to persuade, to entertain, to enlighten, to facilitate shared understanding, to carry on tradition, etc. Although the audience indeed has the opportunity to form their own conclusions and opinions, any story is always grounded in the storyteller's (more or less deliberate) decisions regarding what/who to include and what/who to not include. This, in turn, creates the "frame" within which the narrative is told.

A very common story format is that of a plot with a three-act structure. It is comprised of a beginning, that introduces some kind of conflict and any stakeholders/actors (who, or, what) that are somehow affected by or involved in the conflict. The audience is then guided on a journey (a phase often referred to as the body of the story), during which the components of the story, such as the relationship between cause and effect, is unfolded and explored further in detail. The driving forces of the actors are typically what pushes the process forward and keeps us engaged. This eventually leads up to an ending, where the conflict is somehow explained or resolved, commonly using an element of surprise. In some cultures it is essential that a story includes some kind of unexpected 'flip'.

Although it may feel out of place to apply classic storytelling elements directly to scientific communication, here are some examples of simple ways to use storytelling when presenting your data and findings:

use visualisation to reveal and highlight new or surprising aspects of a particular phenomenon or its relation to other phenomena,
establish a clear reading order and visual hierarchy; this will make it clear to your audience where and how to enter your visualisation, and where to go next,
use examples or analogies; this can illustrate and explain a piece of information in a more varied, understandable, relatable, vivid and memorable way.

Going beyond 2D and 3D

While two- and three-dimensional static images has long been the standard way of communicating research, the rise of audiovisual media and interactive web design has made it increasingly common to tell dynamic, data-driven stories that incorporates additional dimensions, such as time.

An example of this is an interactive visualisation, created by data visualisation firm Periscopic, that uses time and motion to communicate the accumulative effects of gun killings in the United States in 2018. The visualisation starts off slow, which helps the viewer understand the basic structure of the data set and get to know the individuals "behind" the data set. As additional data points are added, the visualisation and counters speeds up. When the visualisation finally comes to a end, the creators have taken the viewer on a journey, which, in an emotional and engaging way, has managed to illustrate the devastating amount of human suffering and lost potential caused by gun killings. The creators have also made it possible for the viewers to narrow down on particular variables and explore the data further on their own, using interactive filtering options provided below the graph. By doing so, they empower the audience to become an active player in constructing and continuing the story. In summary, this is a good example of how the creators of this visualisation have managed to focus on what stories and storytelling is all about: people.