Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic > Quotes

“Having all the information in the world at our fingertips doesn’t make it easier to communicate: it makes it harder.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Will you be encountering each other for the first time through this communication, or do you have an established relationship? Do they already trust you as an expert, or do you need to work to establish credibility? These are important considerations when it comes to determining how to structure your communication and whether and when to use data, and may impact the order and flow of the overall story you aim to tell.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“When you have just a number or two that you want to communicate: use the numbers directly.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“You know you’ve achieved perfection, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing to take away”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“You should always want your audience to know or do something. If you can't concisely articulate that, you should revisit whether you need to communicate in the first place.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Using a table in a live presentation is rarely a good idea. As your audience reads it, you lose their ears and attention to make your point verbally. When”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“The biggest shift was from a bar graph to a line graph. As we’ve discussed, line graphs typically make it easier to see trends over time. This shift also has the effect of visually reducing discrete elements, because the data that was previously five bars has been reduced to a single line with the end points highlighted. When we consider the full data being plotted, we’ve gone from 25 bars to 4 lines. The organization of the data as a line graph allows the use of a single x-axis that can be leveraged across all of the categories. This simplifies the processing of the information (rather than seeing the years in a legend at the left and then having to translate across the various groups of bars).”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Figure 5.10 Add action title and annotation In Figure 5.10, thoughtful use of text makes the design accessible. It’s clear to the audience what they are looking at as well as what they should pay attention to and why.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Model visual #5: horizontal stacked bars Figure 6.5 shows the results of survey questions on relative priorities in a developing nation. This is a great deal of information, but due to strategic emphasizing and de-emphasizing of components, it does not become visually overwhelming. Figure 6.5 Horizontal stacked bars Stacked bars make sense here given the nature of what is being graphed: top priority (in first position in the darkest shade), 2nd priority (in second position and a slightly lighter shade of the same color), and 3rd priority (in third position and an even lighter shade of the same color). Orienting the chart horizontally means the category names along the left are easy to read in horizontal text.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“While tables interact with our verbal system, graphs interact with our visual system, which is faster at processing information.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Further develop the situation or problem by covering relevant background. Incorporate external context or comparison points. Give examples that illustrate the issue. Include data that demonstrates the problem. Articulate what will happen if no action is taken or no change is made. Discuss potential options for addressing the problem. Illustrate the benefits of your recommended solution.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Sometimes bar charts are avoided because they are common. This is a mistake. Rather, bar charts should be leveraged because they are common, as this means less of a learning curve for your audience.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“First, To whom are you communicating? It is important to have a good understanding of who your audience is and how they perceive you. This can help you to identify common ground that will help you ensure they hear your message. Second, What do you want your audience to know or do?”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Horizontal bar chart If I had to pick a single go-to graph for categorical data, it would be the horizontal bar chart, which flips the vertical version on its side. Why? Because it is extremely easy to read. The horizontal bar chart is especially useful if your category names are long, as the text is written from left to right, as most audiences read, making your graph legible for your audience.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“What would a successful outcome look like? If you only had a limited amount of time or a single sentence to tell your audience what they need to know, what would you say? In particular, I find that these last two questions can lead to insightful conversation.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“In my experience, however, the best way to learn a tool is to use it. When you can’t figure out how to do something, don’t give up. Continue to play with the program and search Google for solutions. Any frustration you encounter will be worth it when you can bend your tool to your will!”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“There is a story in your data. But your tools don’t know what that story is. That’s where it takes you—the analyst or communicator of the information—to bring that story visually and contextually to life.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“My base color is grey, not black, to allow for greater contrast since color stands out more against grey than black. For my attention-grabbing color, I often use blue for a number of reasons: (1) I like it, (2) you avoid issues of colorblindness that we’ll discuss momentarily, and (3) it prints well in black-and-white. That said, blue is certainly not your only option (and you’ll see many examples where I deviate from my typical blue for various reasons).”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“The story should ultimately be about your audience, not about you.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“One thing to keep in mind with a table is that you want the design to fade into the background, letting the data take center stage. Don’t let heavy borders or shading compete for attention. Instead, think of using light borders or simply white space to set apart elements of the table.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Beyond annoying our audience by trying to sound smart, we run the risk of making our audience feel dumb. In either case, this is not a good user experience for our audience. Avoid”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Highlighting one aspect can make other things harder to see One word of warning in using preattentive attributes: when you highlight one point in your story, it can actually make other points harder to see. When you’re doing exploratory analysis, you should mostly avoid the use of preattentive attributes for this reason. When it comes to explanatory analysis, however, you should have a specific story you are communicating to your audience. Leverage preattentive attributes to help make that story visually clear.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Short-term memory Short-term memory has limitations. Specifically, people can keep about four chunks of visual information in their short-term memory at a given time. This means that if we create a graph with ten different data series that are ten different colors with ten different shapes of data markers and a legend off to the side, we’re making our audience work very hard going back and forth between the legend and the data to decipher what they are looking at.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“When it comes to the form and function of our data visualizations, we first want to think about what it is we want our audience to be able to do with the data (function) and then create a visualization (form) that will allow for this with ease.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“I almost always use dark grey for the graph title. This ensures that it stands out, but without the sharp contrast you get from pure black on white (rather, I preserve the use of black for a standout color when I’m not using any other colors). A number of preattentive attributes are employed to draw attention to the “Progress to date” trend: color, thickness of line, presence of data marker and label on the final point, and the size of the corresponding text.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“After undertaking an entire analysis, it can be tempting to want to show your audience everything, as evidence of all of the work you did and the robustness of the analysis. Resist this urge. You are making your audience reopen all of the oysters! Concentrate on the pearls, the information your audience needs to know.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“By combining the visual and verbal, we set ourselves up for success when it comes to triggering the formation of long-term memories in our audience.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“What do you need your audience to know or do? This is the point where you think through how to make what you communicate relevant for your audience and form a clear understanding of why they should care about what you say.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Alignment The single change having the biggest impact in the preceding before-and-after example was the shift from center-aligned to left-justified text. In the original version, each block of text on the page is center-aligned. This does not create clean lines either on the left or on the right, which can make even a thoughtful layout appear sloppy. I tend to avoid center-aligned text for this reason.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals

“Who is your audience? What do you need them to know or do? This chapter describes the importance of understanding the situational context, including the audience, communication mechanism, and desired tone.”
― Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic, Storytelling with Data: A Data Visualization Guide for Business Professionals