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The Data Science Lifecycle: Communication
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| Data Science Lifecycle: Communication - Sketchnote by @nitya |
Pre-Lecture Quiz
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Introduction
What is Communication?
Let’s begin this lesson by defining communication. To communicate is to convey or exchange information. Information can include ideas, thoughts, feelings, messages, subtle signals, data—anything that a sender (someone sharing information) wants a receiver (someone receiving information) to understand. In this lesson, we’ll refer to senders as communicators and receivers as the audience.
Data Communication & Storytelling
When communicating, the goal is to convey or exchange information. However, when communicating data, your goal shouldn’t just be to pass along numbers. Instead, you should aim to tell a story informed by your data—effective data communication and storytelling go hand-in-hand. Your audience is more likely to remember a story you tell than a number you share. Later in this lesson, we’ll explore ways to use storytelling to communicate your data more effectively.
Types of Communication
This lesson will cover two types of communication: One-Way Communication and Two-Way Communication.
One-way communication occurs when a sender shares information with a receiver without expecting feedback or a response. Examples of one-way communication include mass emails, news broadcasts, or TV commercials that inform you about a product. In these cases, the sender’s goal is to deliver information, not to engage in an exchange.
Two-way communication happens when all parties act as both senders and receivers. A sender begins by sharing information, and the receiver provides feedback or a response. This is the type of communication we typically think of, such as conversations in person, over the phone, on social media, or via text messages.
When communicating data, you may use one-way communication (e.g., presenting at a conference or to a large group where questions won’t be asked immediately) or two-way communication (e.g., persuading stakeholders for buy-in or convincing a teammate to invest time and effort in a new project).
Effective Communication
Your Responsibilities as a Communicator
As a communicator, it’s your responsibility to ensure that your audience takes away the information you want them to understand. When communicating data, you don’t just want your audience to remember numbers—you want them to grasp a story informed by your data. A good data communicator is also a good storyteller.
How do you tell a story with data? There are countless ways, but here are six strategies we’ll discuss in this lesson:
- Understand Your Audience, Your Medium, & Your Communication Method
- Begin with the End in Mind
- Approach it Like an Actual Story
- Use Meaningful Words & Phrases
- Use Emotion
Each of these strategies is explained in detail below.
1. Understand Your Audience, Your Channel & Your Communication Method
The way you communicate with family members is likely different from how you communicate with friends. You probably use different words and phrases tailored to the people you’re speaking to. The same principle applies when communicating data. Consider who your audience is, their goals, and the context they have about the situation you’re explaining.
You can often categorize your audience. In a Harvard Business Review article, “How to Tell a Story with Data,” Dell Executive Strategist Jim Stikeleather identifies five audience categories:
- Novice: First exposure to the subject but doesn’t want oversimplification.
- Generalist: Aware of the topic but looking for an overview and major themes.
- Managerial: Seeks an in-depth, actionable understanding of intricacies and interrelationships, with access to details.
- Expert: Prefers exploration and discovery over storytelling, with a focus on great detail.
- Executive: Has limited time and wants to understand the significance and conclusions of weighted probabilities.
These categories can guide how you present data to your audience.
Additionally, consider the channel you’re using to communicate. Your approach will differ if you’re writing a memo or email versus presenting at a meeting or conference.
Understanding whether you’ll use one-way or two-way communication is also critical. For example:
- If your audience is mostly Novices and you’re using one-way communication, you’ll need to educate them and provide context before presenting your data and explaining its significance. Clarity is key since they can’t ask direct questions.
- If your audience is mostly Managerial and you’re using two-way communication, you can likely skip the context and dive into the data and its implications. However, you’ll need to manage timing and keep the discussion on track, as questions may arise that could derail your story.
2. Begin With The End In Mind
Starting with the end in mind means knowing your intended takeaways for the audience before you begin communicating. Being clear about what you want your audience to learn helps you craft a coherent story. This approach works for both one-way and two-way communication.
How do you start with the end in mind? Before communicating your data, write down your key takeaways. As you prepare your story, continually ask yourself, “How does this fit into the story I’m telling?”
Caution: While starting with the end in mind is ideal, avoid cherry-picking data—only sharing data that supports your point while ignoring other data. If some of your data contradicts your takeaways, share it honestly and explain why you’re sticking with your conclusions despite the conflicting data.
3. Approach it Like an Actual Story
Traditional stories often follow five phases: Exposition, Rising Action, Climax, Falling Action, and Denouement. Or, more simply: Context, Conflict, Climax, Closure, and Conclusion. You can use a similar structure when communicating data.
- Context: Set the stage and ensure everyone is on the same page.
- Conflict: Explain why you collected the data and the problem you’re addressing.
- Climax: Present the data, its meaning, and the solutions it suggests.
- Closure: Reiterate the problem and proposed solutions.
- Conclusion: Summarize key takeaways and recommend next steps.
4. Use Meaningful Words & Phrases
If I told you, “Our users take a long time to onboard onto our platform,” how long would you think “a long time” is? An hour? A week? It’s unclear. Now imagine I said this to an audience—each person might interpret “a long time” differently.
Instead, what if I said, “Our users take, on average, 3 minutes to sign up and onboard onto our platform”? That’s much clearer.
When communicating data, don’t assume your audience thinks like you. Clarity is your responsibility. If your data or story isn’t clear, your audience may struggle to follow and miss your key takeaways.
Use specific, meaningful words and phrases instead of vague ones. For example:
- “We had an impressive year!” (What does “impressive” mean? A 2% increase? A 50% increase?)
- “Our users’ success rates increased dramatically.” (How much is “dramatic”?)
- “This project will require significant effort.” (What does “significant” mean?)
While vague words can be useful for introductions or summaries, ensure the rest of your presentation is precise and clear.
5. Use Emotion
Emotion is a powerful tool in storytelling, especially when communicating data. It helps your audience empathize, makes them more likely to take action, and increases the chances they’ll remember your message.
You’ve likely seen this in TV commercials. Some use somber tones to evoke sadness and emphasize their message, while others are upbeat and associate their data with happiness.
Here are a few ways to use emotion when communicating data:
- Testimonials and Personal Stories: Collect both quantitative and qualitative data. If your data is mostly quantitative, gather personal stories to add depth and context.
- Imagery: Use images to help your audience visualize the situation and feel the emotion you want to convey.
- Color: Colors evoke different emotions. For example:
- Blue: Peace and trust
- Green: Nature and environment
- Red: Passion and excitement
- Yellow: Optimism and happiness Be mindful that colors can have different meanings in different cultures.
Communication Case Study
Emerson is a Product Manager for a mobile app. Emerson notices that customers submit 42% more complaints and bug reports on weekends. Additionally, customers who don’t receive a response to their complaints within 48 hours are 32% more likely to rate the app 1 or 2 stars in the app store.
After researching, Emerson identifies two solutions to address the issue. Emerson schedules a 30-minute meeting with the three company leads to present the data and proposed solutions.
The goal of the meeting is to help the company leads understand that the following two solutions can improve the app’s rating, which could lead to higher revenue:
Solution 1. Hire customer service reps to work on weekends.
Solution 2. Purchase a new customer service ticketing system that helps reps prioritize complaints based on how long they’ve been in the queue. In the meeting, Emerson spends 5 minutes explaining why having a low rating on the app store is problematic, 10 minutes discussing the research process and how trends were identified, 10 minutes reviewing recent customer complaints, and the final 5 minutes briefly covering two potential solutions.
Was this an effective way for Emerson to communicate during this meeting?
During the meeting, one company lead became fixated on the 10 minutes of customer complaints Emerson presented. After the meeting, these complaints were the only thing this team lead remembered. Another company lead primarily focused on Emerson’s explanation of the research process. The third company lead did recall the solutions Emerson proposed but wasn’t sure how those solutions could be implemented.
In the situation above, it’s clear there was a significant gap between what Emerson intended for the team leads to take away and what they actually took away from the meeting. Below is an alternative approach Emerson could consider.
How could Emerson improve this approach?
Context, Conflict, Climax, Closure, Conclusion
Context - Emerson could spend the first 5 minutes introducing the overall situation and ensuring the team leads understand how the problems impact key company metrics, such as revenue.
It could be framed like this: "Currently, our app's rating in the app store is 2.5. App store ratings are crucial for App Store Optimization, which affects how many users discover our app in search results and how potential users perceive it. Naturally, the number of users we attract is directly tied to revenue."
Conflict Emerson could then dedicate the next 5 minutes to discussing the conflict.
It could be presented like this: “Users submit 42% more complaints and bug reports on weekends. Customers who submit a complaint that remains unanswered for over 48 hours are 32% less likely to rate our app above a 2 in the app store. Improving our app's rating to a 4 would boost visibility by 20-30%, which I estimate could increase revenue by 10%." Emerson should be ready to back up these figures with evidence.
Climax After establishing the context and conflict, Emerson could move to the climax for about 5 minutes.
Here, Emerson could introduce the proposed solutions, explain how they address the outlined issues, detail how they could be integrated into current workflows, provide cost estimates, discuss the ROI, and perhaps even share screenshots or wireframes illustrating how the solutions would look in practice. Emerson could also include testimonials from users whose complaints took over 48 hours to resolve, as well as feedback from a current customer service representative about the existing ticketing system.
Closure Emerson could then spend 5 minutes summarizing the company’s challenges, revisiting the proposed solutions, and reinforcing why these solutions are the right choice.
Conclusion Since this is a meeting with a few stakeholders involving two-way communication, Emerson could allocate 10 minutes for questions to ensure any confusion among the team leads is addressed before the meeting concludes.
If Emerson adopted approach #2, it’s far more likely the team leads would leave the meeting with the intended takeaways: that the handling of complaints and bugs needs improvement, and there are two actionable solutions to achieve that improvement. This approach would be a much more effective way to communicate the data and the narrative Emerson wants to convey.
Conclusion
Summary of main points
- Communication is the act of conveying or exchanging information.
- When communicating data, the goal isn’t just to share numbers—it’s to tell a story informed by the data.
- There are two types of communication: One-Way Communication (information is shared without expecting a response) and Two-Way Communication (information is exchanged interactively).
- There are various strategies for telling a story with data. The five strategies discussed are:
- Understand Your Audience, Your Medium, & Your Communication Method
- Begin with the End in Mind
- Approach it Like an Actual Story
- Use Meaningful Words & Phrases
- Use Emotion
Recommended Resources for Self Study
The Five C's of Storytelling - Articulate Persuasion
1.4 Your Responsibilities as a Communicator – Business Communication for Success (umn.edu)
How to Tell a Story with Data (hbr.org)
Two-Way Communication: 4 Tips for a More Engaged Workplace (yourthoughtpartner.com)
6 succinct steps to great data storytelling - BarnRaisers, LLC (barnraisersllc.com)
How to Tell a Story With Data | Lucidchart Blog
6 Cs of Effective Storytelling on Social Media | Cooler Insights
The Importance of Emotions In Presentations | Ethos3 - A Presentation Training and Design Agency
Data storytelling: linking emotions and rational decisions (toucantoco.com)
Emotional Advertising: How Brands Use Feelings to Get People to Buy (hubspot.com)
Choosing Colors for Your Presentation Slides | Think Outside The Slide
How To Present Data [10 Expert Tips] | ObservePoint
Microsoft Word - Persuasive Instructions.doc (tpsnva.org)
The Power of Story for Your Data (thinkhdi.com)
Common Mistakes in Data Presentation (perceptualedge.com)
Infographic: Here are 15 Common Data Fallacies to Avoid (visualcapitalist.com)
Cherry Picking: When People Ignore Evidence that They Dislike – Effectiviology
Tell Stories with Data: Communication in Data Science | by Sonali Verghese | Towards Data Science
1. Communicating Data - Communicating Data with Tableau [Book] (oreilly.com)
Post-Lecture Quiz
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Assignment
Disclaimer:
This document has been translated using the AI translation service Co-op Translator. While we aim for accuracy, please note that automated translations may include errors or inaccuracies. The original document in its native language should be regarded as the authoritative source. For critical information, professional human translation is advised. We are not responsible for any misunderstandings or misinterpretations resulting from the use of this translation.