Speaker 1: What if I told you that the world creates 2.5 quintillion bytes of data every single day? Would you believe me? What if I told you that 90% of all data ever created in the history of the world sprouted in just the past two years? Do you believe me yet? Well, hold on to your brains, folks, because both are very, very true. Whether it's the 13 new Spotify songs, or the 600 Wikipedia page edits, maybe the 527,000 Snapchats, or how about 60 million texts, all of this data is created, no, not just in a day, in 60 seconds, which is why we want to let the data scientists decipher this never-ending feed of information. But it is important for all of us to know how to present this information in a visually appealing way. That's why I'm here. Hello, world, my name is Mike Ploeger, here with Visme, and I'm here to show you how you can create data that appeals to your viewers, but also how to create data that tells a story. Let's get started. Before we begin, if you're interested in how our brains decipher all of this information, check out this video by Visme founder, Peyman Tai, about the science behind how we perceive objects. Believe it or not, our vision is much more complicated than you may have ever thought, but Peyman simplifies it with a handful of helpful visuals. When it comes to a specific image, there are two things that our brains immediately notice, contrast and patterns. Take a look at our very first image. At first glance, you can only decipher a tree landscape. That's because there is absolutely no contrast in this all black image. But as you start to add in more contrast with purple and yellow, you may notice that now there's a bear that was there that you couldn't see before. But it's hard to have any more contrast than with black and white. In this final image, that bear is popping off of the page. This just goes to show that our brains are better at identifying color rather than shapes. Through what is called pre-attentive processing, our brains are constantly gathering information from our environment. Because of this, it's easier to detect the differences around us. That is especially noticeable in patterns. We just talked about contrast, so in this very first pattern, our brains immediately notice that darker rectangle in the lower left. If you take away the contrast, but you make one rectangle just a little bit larger, it still stands out immediately. Lastly, you take that one rectangle that was a little bit larger and even flip it vertically. It still stands out among the rest of its rectangle friends. This is our brains working for us. Now that we've established how our brains see images, let's dive into applying this knowledge with creating some effective data visualizations. First, different from reading text, our eyes don't follow a specific order when reading a chart or a graph. Our eyes don't go from left to right or from up to down. When reading a graph or a chart, as you can see here, our eyes kind of go really wherever. The pace when looking at a graph or a chart is also very different. We may just glance at one part of the image while glaring at another. This is why it's so difficult to create a graphic that takes us on a predefined visual journey. When we look at a graph, our eyes are immediately directed to what stands out. It all goes back to the patterns that we had just discussed. But there should just be one main focal point to your image. In this graph, our eyes are immediately directed to that steep climb and peak on the right side of the graph. And after we see the title, we immediately understand that the US incarceration rate has jumped greatly beginning in the 1970s. The best data storyteller will only have one clear message that is effortlessly understood. This graph here did a great job of that. When there are more than five variables present, our eyes perceive all of them as one single whole. This is another reason to simplify your charts and only highlight one single point. This graph here is an example of what not to do. You notice the word outage, the gray background spikes, and even that green line going throughout the graph. But what's the message? A lot of unnecessary time and effort is spent into deciphering what this chart is telling me. After some time, you can probably figure it out, but it would be much more effective if you got rid of that gray background area and told us the calls received and simply focused on the ratings before and after the outage. Remember, and I will continue to emphasize this, our brains recognize patterns. And in patterns, we find connections. Here the brain assumes the connection between the color orange and top performers and also the orange data points. This leads us to think that the orange data points are the top performers, but that's not the case. This is another poorly executed chart. The top performers are actually all of those data points in the top right, which if you look at it, seems to be mostly the blue data points. If you're using more than one color, you want to assign deliberately, which didn't happen here. From the time we're born, we're influenced by cultural conventions. What are these exactly? Well, for example, time is read on a line from left to right, or with colors, red means hot and blue means cold. The same can even be said with images, a scale and first balance or comparison between two different things. If these conventions are ignored, our visuals will become much more difficult to understand. This chart is nearly identical to the one that we found back in tip three, but time is placed on the y-axis. Since time is read on a line from left to right, as we just said, this is much more confusing and much less effective. Keep time on the x-axis, trust me. Now this video isn't just about improving your chart. The whole reason we're here is to help your chart tell a story. So let's show you some before and after examples to help you create some fresh ideas on how to create that next effective storytelling chart. If you want to look at the number of tickets received versus the number of tickets processed in a year, this chart isn't too difficult to read, but is it telling the story for the reason of decline? No, no, it's not. In comes the after chart where you can clearly see the decline in tickets processed. There's also a lot more room for text, which will help explain the story. Two employees quit. That's your reason for decline. So if I'm the boss, this is a very, very easy decision. Hire two more employees pronto. In our next example, we have a lot of room for text, but pie charts aren't always the best solution, especially for the data that we have here. The use of one single bar chart makes the info a lot more clear. More children were interested in science after the program, where before they thought science was just okay. Once again, we have an ineffective and confusing chart. It's not clarifying the change in average price per product over time. The reader is forced to go back and forth from the legend to the bars, the legend to the bars. But in the second chart, the lines are labeled properly, so there is no back and forth. You can see that the trend for each product is recognizable at the very first glance. In any case that you want to show the changes over time, a line graph is probably your best option. I like to think of it as timeline. Maybe that's just me, but maybe it could also help you too. Last but not least, our final before chart seems pretty easy to read. However, the conventions that we've learned and discussed earlier are not applied properly. The level of interest isn't organized in ascending order, where here in the second chart the reader understands who's the most interested versus who's the least interested in that correct order. Through color and order via a scale, the differences in values are more distinguishable. Now that you've learned the principles for persuasive data storytelling, create your next chart on Visme's website. There's a chart and infographic tool that is completely free, and there's a wide variety of other visual communication tools at your disposal. Also, make sure you subscribe to our channel for constantly updated content. For now, I'm Mike Ploeger with Visme, helping you make information beautiful.