Generally, when you present your conclusion to a group of executives, your presentation competes for their time and attention with a lot of different things. Using your data to explain a story is powerful because stories have the following characteristics:
- Memorable
- Impactful
- Personal
Using storytelling to present your data or insights can help you to do the following:
- Keep the interest of your audience
- Explain complex concepts
- Convince people
- Make your presentation memorable
There is a lot of good literature around storytelling and data storytelling. The objective of this section is just present this Qlik Sense functionality but I would like to share my trick to prepare presentations. Usually, in our daily work, we need to prepare a presentation within a limited preparation time. Personally, I use a notepad (not a digital one) and I write down my outline in seven fundamental building blocks:
- Audience: Everything starts with the audience. A presentation for IT is very different from a presentation for a business unit. Ask yourself, what are the concerns of your audience? Why are they interested in your story?
- Objective: What is your objective? Do you want your audience to make a decision? Is it just an informative presentation? Having your objective in mind is really important when creating your story.
- Key messages: Time and attention are very limited; writing down your key messages will help you to focus your story.
- The story: Draw your story and choose the data visualization you are going to use. Choose the visualizations that help you to explain your story. Are they relevant? Take time restrictions into consideration.
- The link between the slides or between visualizations: Links between slides are sentences that avoid breaking the flow of the story between slides. Different slides in a story can break the flow of the story and make your presentation just a collection of slides. For this reason, I prepare every link between two slides.
- Review everything: After we have noted down the preceding building blocks, we have to ask ourselves the following questions:
- Are the key messages clearly explained in the story?
- Are you focusing only on key messages?
- Do the visualizations support the story?
- Are the visualizations clear?
- Does the story support the objective and the key messages?
- Is your story and its content suitable for your audience?
Qlik Sense Desktop has a great tool for data storytelling. To open a data story, click the Stories button and choose the Shipment delays impact story, as shown in this screenshot:
As you can see in the following screenshot, press the Play button to start the story:
The presentation mode has arrow buttons at the right and at the left, to go forward or backward in your presentation. When you present your insights, people will have questions about the data; by pressing the Go to sheet button, you can open the data application and show them the data, as illustrated in this screenshot:
To create a new story, you need to take some snapshots of your data visualizations. Go to the application, open a sheet, and press the camera button, marked by the arrow:
Now the charts are in snapshot mode and the visualizations are highlighted with a dotted line; you just need to click on the chart and Qlik Sense will take a snapshot that you will be able to use to create a story, as shown here:
Finally, we have some data snapshots we can use to create a new story. We have to go to the top area of the screen, press the stories button, and press the Create new story button:
Choose a name for the story and start creating it. To create your story, you have five main components:
- Camera Tool: Using this tool, you can capture the charts
- Text: Using this tool, you can add titles or paragraphs
- Shapes: Use this tool, to point to any data
- Effects: You can use this tool to add effects to the charts to highlight special data
- Images: Using this tool, add images from the media library
The following screenshot shows the five components:
Now you can create a sheet using these components just by dragging and dropping the components into the sheet.
We've added a blank slide and we've added charts, effects, text, and images but we can also add live slides by embedding a sheet into a slide. In the bottom left area, click the plus sign to add a new slide. There are three types of slides:
- Blank: This is a slide like the one we've just created
- Sheet left-aligned: This is a slide with a left aligned embedded sheet
- Sheet: This is a slide with an embedded sheet
These slides are illustrated in the following screenshot:
Select Sheet left-aligned or Sheet and choose a sheet for your slide. You will get a blank sheet into which you can drag and drop components, as well as customizing them according to your preference. The following screenshot shows a 360 Analysis sheet that has been customized:
The Go to Sheet button and the inclusion of a live sheet in a slide give the opportunity to bring your story to life and handle audience questions.