8 Rules for Better Data Storytelling

It was the end of 2020 when social media platforms faced an influx of Spotify Wrapped content—a summary of the user’s most-streamed music in the past year. Those given the title of “top 1% fans worldwide” of their favorite artists proudly paraded their title like a badge of honor, while others shared their Most Played Genre as a declaration of their musical preferences. In 2020 alone, 90 million users engaged with Spotify Wrapped. Clearly, users enjoyed the data stories their streaming statistics told about them. Spotify Wrapped is only one example that illustrates the increasing use of data visualizations in our daily lives. As the world watched the Covid-19 pandemic unfold, data visualizations like John Hopkin’s Dashboard played a crucial role in informing the public on the extent of the pandemic. Data stories like National Geographic’s coverage on 500,000 Covid-19 deaths elicited awareness of the deadliness of the virus. All these examples were in line with DataCamp’s prediction of data visualization (and data stories) becoming mainstream in our 2021 Trends Report.

In this white paper, we'll outline 8 rules for better data storytelling, and how data scientists, business experts, and anyone interacting with data visualizations can deliver better data stories.