In this episode, I’m joined by Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic and Mike Cisneros from Storytelling with Data to talk about their new book, Before & After. We dig into where the examples came from, how they selected and refined real client work, and why the book focuses so heavily on process rather than rules or templates. We also reflect on how the data visualization field has evolved over the past decade—from best practices and chart types to iteration, audience empathy, and real-world constraints. Along the way, we talk about teaching data viz, common pitfalls, and why there’s no such thing as a true “201 course”—only practice.
Resources
Grab the new book, Before and After – Practical Makeovers for Powerful Data Stories
Guest Bio
Cole has always had a penchant for turning data into pictures and into stories. She is CEO of storytelling with data, the author of best-selling books storytelling with data: a data visualization guide for business professionals, storytelling with data: let’s practice!, storytelling with you: plan, create, and deliver a stellar presentation, and the new children’s bookDaphne Draws Data: A storytelling with data adventure. For more than a decade, Cole and her team have delivered interactive learning sessions sought after by data-minded individuals, companies, and philanthropic organizations all over the world. They also help people create graphs that make sense and weave them into compelling stories through the popular SWD community, blog, podcast, and videos.
Mike is an award-winning data visualization specialist, a two-time Tableau Visionary, and the co-author of storytelling with data: before & after (Wiley, 2025. His work has appeared in Makeover Monday: Improving How We Visualize and Analyze Data, One Chart at a Time (Wiley, 2018) as well as a variety of media outlets, including the Washington Post, Forbes, and Fast Company. With Jenny Schumi, Mike has written several books in the data-focused Ruby Marks Adventures series for young readers. Prior to joining SWD, he spent more than 20 years working for companies great and small, across industries ranging from music and publishing to energy retailing and the federal government. In his roles as a data storyteller for SWD and highly regarded speaker across the US and Europe, he teaches individuals and organizations how to transform complex analyses into compelling, clear visual messages that are both understood and impactful.
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Transcript
00:01.85
Jon
I’ve got part of the storytelling with data team. How many? What? Okay. Hi.
00:08.36
Cole
You’re not gonna make me do percentages on the fly, are you?
00:08.50
Jon
How are you? going to do math. You’re going to have to do math. You do little math. What share do I have here? I only have, i we got what? Two thirds of the author group for the new book, right?
00:20.52
Cole
Yes. And what, roughly a quarter of the storytelling with data to team.
00:21.42
Jon
We’re missing Alex. Oh, roughly for the team. All right. Nice.
00:25.91
Cole
Maybe exactly a quarter.
00:27.54
Mike
Yeah, based on as as we’re recording this, we’ve just had our holiday party.
00:31.22
Cole
There we go
00:32.58
Mike
So we were keeping track of the eight people involved at any given time.
00:33.20
Cole
Ah, yes.
00:33.37
Jon
Yeah.
00:37.04
Mike
So yes, one quarter.
00:38.97
Jon
And this doesn’t include Cole, your kids. So I’m assume every once in a while have to chip in. So are they like, yeah.
00:43.81
Cole
Well, mean, they, yeah, they’ll like count swag or help brainstorm dragon ideas and that sort of thing.
00:50.39
Jon
ha
00:51.22
Cole
But no, they do not count toward the eight.
00:52.60
Jon
They don’t count. Yeah. It’s probably good. That’s probably a good rule of thumb just, you know, for, you know, labor laws and whatever.
00:57.72
Cole
ah
00:58.39
Jon
um Well, good to see you both. um It’s been a while. i Excited about the new book, ah Before and After. um why don’t we do ah intros just so folks, I mean, you know, I think everybody knows storytelling with data, but we’ll just we’ll just do that and then we can talk about the about this book. um So Mike, you want to go to kick us off?
01:18.42
Mike
Sure. I’m Mike Cisneros. I am a data storyteller at storytelling with data, which as I often say, sounds like a mouthful. when you say it all in a row like that. But what it means is that I get to work with Cole and bring the lessons that we have been teaching to people over the course of more than a decade to people all around the world, vette through workshops or through books or through other writing, or through podcasts, whatever it is. Because one of the things that was always exciting to me in my
01:51.15
Mike
pre-SWD life as a data analyst was getting to show people how effective it can be when you are telling your stories, visualizing your data in a way that connects better with your audience. And this was Cole’s whole thing. She was one of the first people that i remember reading who would talk about this on a regular basis. It was extremely accessible from my perspective.
02:14.68
Mike
And so getting to carry that banner forward on behalf of her and of the company is something that I’ve been fortunate to do over the past six, seven years. Haha.
02:25.24
Mike
Sorry about that parents.
02:25.41
Jon
That’s great.
02:26.33
Cole
okay
02:26.71
Jon
Cole? ah cole
02:31.01
Cole
Cole Nussbaum or Naflik and I characterize what we do at Storytelling with Data as teaching people how to make graphs that make sense, but really going also beyond the graph and thinking about your audience and the journey you want to take them on and how you can weave the data that you want to communicate into that.
02:52.44
Cole
in a way that gets people’s gets people’s attention and builds their understanding ah in a new way and ideally helps them want to act more smartly or have a better decision than they otherwise would have.
03:06.40
Cole
and As Mike mentioned, we do this through a lot of different resources, team trainings, public workshops, podcasts, online community, books, which we’ll talk more about today.
03:18.42
Jon
he Yeah. um Great. So um the new book is out, Cole, Mike, and Alex, co-authors, who’s who’s not here. um So there’s about, I think, like 20 separate chapters going through these different examples. um Let’s start with where the examples came from. My recollection, if I remember correctly, is that you all put out like a public…
03:42.33
Jon
Or no, wait, did you publicly look, search for people? Or this was all just internal like client stuff. Like we’ve got we’ve got a huge library of stuff that we can pull from.
03:51.86
Cole
Yeah, so I mentioned one of our main work streams is team trainings, workshops, where we’ll go in, we’ll spend most typically half a day with a client or a day with a client, and we always solicit examples from them ahead of time. And what we say is, this can be any example where you needed to communicate something. Oftentimes it’s data because people are coming to us for that piece of things, but sometimes it’s a slide or a report or an email. It can take a variety of forms.
04:19.71
Cole
And then what we do is we use this to get a better understanding of the challenges specific to the client that they might be facing, also understand where we might go deeper or less deep into some of our standard content, And then we typically pick a handful of the examples shared and use those actually to illustrate the lessons that we teach, which is a really powerful thing because I’ve found that sometimes people, when you teach them something and show it through an example that you’ve made up for this purpose, it’s easy for people to say, oh yeah, that works there, but that’s not going to work in my scenario.
04:57.25
Jon
Yeah.
04:58.98
Cole
And so when you show the lessons through their examples and their colleagues’ examples, it takes away that argument and I think really opens people’s eyes to the possibility of what could be that might look very different from how things are typically done.
04:59.65
Jon
Right.
05:11.75
Jon
Mm-hmm.
05:14.38
Cole
And so what this means is we had a ton of content over the past 15 years or so that we’ve been doing this to pull from. And really, that was the one of the impetuses of the book was to be able to take this magic that we are able to cultivate for people in a workshop setting and make that more widely available.
05:22.16
Jon
Mm-hmm.
05:37.11
Jon
So Mike, tell me a little bit about this process. So you have this huge library. Now you have to go back and pull out like what your favorite redesigns or like the ones that you, like you and Alex and others like remember. And then like, so, so then what’s the process of redesigning it and then writing each chapter?
05:58.68
Mike
It’s an excellent question because it if only it could have been our favorites from over the years because you love all of your children equally, of course.
06:04.79
Jon
Yeah.
06:08.30
Mike
But there are some redesigns, some makeovers or before and afters, as sometimes we call them nowadays, given the the title of the book, that…
06:18.94
Mike
spoke to us as the people who were working on them, that there was something really interesting, a unique challenge, a particular thing the client was trying to communicate that doesn’t always come up in the examples that we get, but definitely comes up in business on a regular basis. And you think,
06:37.59
Mike
oh, I haven’t ever gotten the chance to show people how to solve this problem in some of my other workshops. So those tend to stick in your mind and you think, oh, this would be a great teaching example for something beyond teaching the fundamental lessons that we often include in our workshops. So we went back, Alex and I, Cole, ah all of our other storytellers, Simon, Amy, Elizabeth was on the team at the time when we started thinking about this many years ago. And we all…
07:07.26
Mike
took from our history, from our recollection of the particular examples that stood out to us, and we put together a pretty long list.
07:19.70
Jon
Yeah.
07:20.02
Mike
And Yes, we all had favorites, but also we’re putting together not just 20 blog posts. We’re putting together something that has to work as a full, cohesive, singular unit. And so in doing so, you want to cover lots of different types of visualizations, lots of different challenges, lots of different, I would even say levels of, oh, here’s something that is relatively straightforward to explain. Here’s something that’s a little more nuanced, but it’s something that you are going to run across in your professional life as long as you keep working in data long enough.
07:58.96
Jon
Yeah.
07:59.10
Mike
So we had that range or we wanted to build that range and that’s how it ended up whittling down from the dozens and dozens of our favorite examples to the 20 that we ended up selecting for publication.
08:12.63
Jon
Now I’m going to guess you’re not be able to answer this question, but maybe. Did you find that certain people on the team had certain
08:20.50
Mike
Thank you.
08:22.84
Jon
classes or themes of visualizations that they were drawn to, to add or to, or to even window down? Like Mike, were you like, Oh, we’re like, I’m the bar chart guy. And Cole’s like, yeah, we’re going to, okay.
08:32.31
Cole
No, mike’s the dot pla mike Mike’s the dot plot guy.
08:35.38
Jon
Mike’s a top fly guy. Like, were there like, i mean you’ve got this team and everybody has their own, you know, personal thing, personal preferences. You find that there are people who are like, I mean, either by client or by graph type or by what they wanted to write about.
08:50.97
Mike
At times, for sure, Cole describes me as the dot plot guy because I like to find i like just to find examples where… a certain graph type that maybe you didn’t expect, but is understandable might be the optimal choice in a certain scenario.
09:08.46
Mike
Or one of the chapters that I was fond of was where a simple bar chart ended up being extraordinarily confusing, which is the opposite of what you would expect if you chose to use a bar chart and honestly using it in a way that seems on the face of it, pretty straightforward.
09:09.07
Jon
Mm-hmm.
09:17.73
Jon
Mm-hmm.
09:28.08
Jon
Mm-hmm.
09:28.25
Mike
And I like to discover those particular areas where there is a twist in it for reader who you might think at the outset, well, this looks pretty good.
09:39.49
Mike
I don’t know why you’re using this example in the first place, because this before that you’re showing me really looks like an after.
09:42.26
Jon
Yeah.
09:46.52
Jon
Right, right, right.
09:46.55
Mike
I don’t know where you’re going with this. And I honestly believe that a lot of the examples in our book are that, because we can get hung up in the
09:48.70
Jon
Yeah.
09:55.54
Mike
framework of let’s do a viz makeover. You can get hung up on the idea that it is all aesthetics based and it isn’t.
09:58.65
Jon
Yeah.
10:03.09
Mike
It’s all about what is this visual going to do in the context of the messaging we’re trying to deliver and in convincing our specific audience of what’s going to matter to them and what they should do. And so taking the The before that looks insidiously like an after and showing people, oh, no, here’s what you can do in order to make this even stronger.
10:25.43
Mike
There’s nothing inherently wrong with what you have, but the opportunity to make it so much more effective is there.
10:25.59
Jon
Mm-hmm.
10:31.39
Mike
And we wanted to choose examples that let people go from… ah from that starting point to a new ending point and show them that it is not incredibly complicated to do that. It’s just changing the way you think about what you are doing with your communication.
10:48.83
Cole
And we experienced that at one point when we tried to put, we had in our minds this idea of like the befores and then the afters and you’d see this like transformation in such a positive way when you went from one to the other and you actually, you don’t see that for the most part or even when you bring it down pairwise to the one before to the after, there are some that you can do that with that look really impressive when you see the before and after, but for the most part, they don’t.
11:03.44
Jon
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
11:13.45
Cole
And it’s interesting because it’s it’s actually the process, which is what the majority of the book is about. It’s not just the before and after. It’s how did you get from one to the other? What were all the considerations that went into it?
11:23.55
Cole
What constraints were faced in this given scenario? And that’s where all the learning comes in is it’s not just
11:30.78
Jon
the
11:31.96
Cole
here’s a bunch of before and afters. It’s the thought process and the iterations and we show all of the in-betweens that that lead you from one to the other.
11:33.84
Jon
Yeah.
11:39.12
Jon
Yeah.
11:41.53
Cole
And so you get through that or the reader gets through that such insight into just the sort of things to be considering or tinkering with as you’re working on improving your data communications.
11:53.65
Mike
It’s kind of like the get ready with me of doing data visualization.
11:57.50
Jon
Yeah.
11:57.64
Mike
It’s, I’m going to step you through my process and here’s how you go.
11:59.77
Jon
yeah
11:59.80
Cole
Yeah.
12:00.85
Mike
And also there are times when we show avenues that we start down, but then we discard because iteration is such an important part of anything that you do.
12:07.79
Cole
Yeah.
12:10.98
Mike
We don’t want to give people the impression that We always know exactly the right route to go from beginning to end. That if we’re trying to show you this is how you do this in the real world, this is how you apply the fundamental lessons that we’ve shown you in all these different scenarios, it’s never going to be if you don’t feel like it is smooth from beginning to end, you’re doing it wrong.
12:33.21
Mike
It’s no, no. You will have to try things.
12:34.71
Jon
Right.
12:36.13
Mike
You will have to get feedback. It’s okay if there are bumps along the road. that’s John, I know you’re from D.C. Remember, that was a a famous quotation from ah the Washington Nationals manager the year they won the World Series was, bumpy roads lead to beautiful places.
12:44.12
Jon
Yeah.
12:49.94
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
12:52.63
Mike
And so that is part of that process of developing something that is going to be effective at the very end.
12:52.73
Jon
well
12:59.22
Jon
Well, I’ll just say for the Nats, it is a bumpy road right now, but that’s a whole other podcast, whole conversation. Um, I want to take a little detour here for a moment. Um, because Cole, it’s the 10th anniversary of your first book storytelling with data.
13:12.10
Jon
I have a hard copy.
13:12.64
Cole
That’s true.
13:13.14
Jon
You sent me over here somewhere up there.
13:14.20
Cole
i have one.
13:14.54
Jon
I can see it.
13:14.88
Cole
Look, I prepared.
13:15.83
Jon
Oh, there you go.
13:16.04
Cole
i have it even to be able to hold up and show.
13:16.31
Jon
Okay. Yeah. Hard copy. Lovely. Um, congrats by the way, I’m 10 years.
13:20.41
Cole
Thank you.
13:21.28
Jon
Um, so I think the question I want to ask you is, um, it feels like your, these two books in some ways kind of are good demonstrations of the evolution in the data viz field, at least in the book world. We’re like storytelling with data, you know, um,
13:44.79
Jon
Boy, I’m to forget. ah Visualize This maybe was Nathan Yao’s first book, you know Alberto’s first books, my books.
13:48.14
Cole
Yeah. Sure.
13:52.43
Jon
um Kind of went in like best practices, graph types, like you know do this, don’t do this. Maybe we’re all a little less dogmatic than we were 10 years ago. And now it seems like more of the books now, including before and after, are more about process.
14:07.64
Jon
um and do And do you also first do you agree with that but secondly do you if you do do you think that’s a maturation of the fields or like like what what is that about.
14:22.65
Cole
Absolutely. I think that it is exactly that because when when the first books you mentioned were coming out, there wasn’t a lot out there. And so it makes sense that we start with the building blocks. we start with the the foundational lessons, the the things that everybody should be thinking about and exploring as they are communicating with data.
14:41.62
Jon
no
14:42.90
Cole
Because the I think the timing of my first book coming out was very fortuitous in terms of you know I had started a blog and that was when there weren’t many blogs out there.
14:55.03
Cole
And so you could actually get attention. And so that was a great way to start writing about some of these ideas and doing that enough plus teaching enough to then be able to have content for a book.
15:07.35
Cole
And the field was definitely maturing at the same time and kind of becoming a field at that point.
15:12.75
Jon
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
15:13.15
Cole
and I mean, I think when I started doing research, when I was back at Google and starting to develop training on this, the really the only books out there were, you know, there were Tufti’s books, Stephen Few,
15:25.18
Cole
I got really into Colin Ware. His stuff’s a little more academic, but like visual perception sort of things and drew a lot from those worlds, I guess, because there wasn’t any there wasn’t a lot else out there.
15:37.43
Cole
There weren’t very many people blogging. There were only a handful of books. Everybody had read the same handful of books.
15:42.91
Jon
Yeah.
15:43.27
Cole
And so i think taking those then plus the real world, you know, here’s a graph we see in the wild or here’s a graph from a client and being able to teach through example at that foundational level.
15:58.17
Cole
Because i think that’s one of the things that i really realized when I go back to the first book is just how simple and straightforward everything is, which makes sense when you’re teaching basic concepts, but also doesn’t match reality.
16:08.92
Jon
who
16:10.77
Cole
you know In reality, there are all these corner cases and you’re always faced with constraints and you have a boss who says, I hate pie charts and you have another one who’s you know who you have 10 minutes with if you’re lucky.
16:20.86
Cole
And so all of these real world, the the messiness that comes in with that. And I think that’s the evolution that we’ve seen in the books that are out there is more how do you deal with the not straightforward case and what can that look like and how do we advance our thinking in ways that will help us be successful across different situations.
16:42.47
Jon
Detour on a detour. ah Do you find fewer people with the, i hate pie charts? Um, thing. I mean, I found fewer and fewer students, particularly students when I’m teaching at the university level, they they haven’t heard of Tufti.
16:58.84
Jon
They haven’t heard a few, they don’t have this, like, they don’t have this disdain for pie charts, which, you know, a lots of potential reasons why.
17:00.15
Cole
Oh, interesting. Yeah.
17:06.46
Cole
and I think it’s become kind of a people like it for the shock value still. So i see I see it played that way on social media.
17:10.36
Jon
Yeah.
17:12.42
Cole
Although I will say between the Storytelling with Data 10 years ago and the 10th anniversary edition, the pie chart section is actually one part that I did fully rewrite where the I went back because I was like, wait, I know you know i know I’ve given talks called like Death to Pie Charts, but i’m like, I know what pie charts are evil.
17:22.94
Jon
e
17:26.36
Jon
Yeah.
17:29.27
Jon
Yeah.
17:30.74
Cole
Did I have a blog post? Like, no, that was like a subsection in the book was titled Pie Charts Are Evil.
17:34.46
Jon
Yeah.
17:35.47
Cole
And so.
17:35.90
Jon
ah
17:36.47
Cole
In the 10th anniversary edition, that subsection has been retitled to pie charts aren’t evil, just often misunderstood or often misused i’ve got verbatim.
17:44.28
Jon
Oh yeah. Okay. That’s good.
17:45.51
Cole
but But in response to new research that came out in the meantime, which is no longer so new, but Robert Crosara and Drew Scow, their pair of pie chart studies.
17:45.98
Jon
All right.
17:51.61
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
17:56.40
Cole
have been some things like that that have come up over the years. But for the most part, the lessons still apply. And I think that really is the nice… dovetailing of before and after. you know You’ve got storytelling with data for the foundational lessons and then before and after for all of the real world application.
18:15.07
Jon
Yeah. Mike, do you have, ah we’ll finish this detour on a detour and then come back in second. But like, do you have either in your own practice or when you’re teaching, do you have a newer, a new version of a graph that’s the never pie charts, but there’s like a never something?
18:34.43
Mike
Off the top of my head, I wouldn’t say that there is any verboten graph type. I talk about pies, I talk about donuts as essentially the same.
18:45.33
Mike
Any food-based chart really could be
18:48.02
Jon
Yeah.
18:49.75
Mike
you know put in the same similar category. But when you think about, we talked a few minutes ago about when Cole started writing, there weren’t that many people writing about this. And so I wasn’t part of the writing community then.
19:03.98
Mike
I was part of the reading community then and the practitioner community.
19:06.55
Jon
o
19:08.15
Mike
But I think that means that it was a smaller community. It was those of us who were seeking out people who were talking and writing about this. And so for us who maybe have been thinking about this in a larger portion of our days for a larger string, a longer string of days, maybe for us, yeah, the pie chart discussion, maybe that’s a little played out.
19:28.80
Jon
Yeah. Right.
19:28.89
Mike
But I teach workshops to people all of the time who don’t think about this every day, all day. And there are new people entering the workforce all of the time, or new people who realize, oh, this has to be a part of my day-to-day business. And so the simpler things, the more foundational things, are still very resonant with the people that I talk to. it’s a The pyramid base continues to get wider of people who are involved in learning. so I do think there is more acceptance of pies because there aren’t such a large percentage of
20:06.78
Mike
didactic data visualization.
20:08.06
Jon
Yeah.
20:08.53
Cole
Bye.
20:08.66
Mike
i am a data viz person. There’s not as many of those in my day-to-day experience.
20:12.54
Jon
Yeah.
20:14.18
Mike
So I i do explain, well, the 100% stacked bar is a great alternative here because it’s like a linear version of a pie, sort of the same thing.
20:14.61
Jon
Yeah.
20:26.01
Mike
And when you just demonstrate, again, that’s that iteration coming back. So So no, i don’t think that there’s there’s that. There’s no new pie charts that that’s taken on the black cloak for that.
20:38.12
Cole
i’ve got I’ve got one to put on the foreboding list. Can I add one to the foreboding list?
20:40.44
Jon
Okay. Yeah.
20:41.48
Cole
here I’ll show it and then I’ll describe it for those who are listening.
20:41.46
Mike
Yeah.
20:43.50
Jon
I’ve got one.
20:44.28
Cole
So, okay.
20:44.79
Jon
Okay.
20:46.18
Cole
So I don’t know if you can see that very well, but I’m
20:47.90
Mike
i was at the vertical line chart.
20:49.53
Cole
Yeah, so I’m showing an example from chapter two of before and after, and it is survey data that is being shown in, yeah, this weird like vertical line chart situation.
20:52.56
Jon
Okay.
21:00.13
Cole
And I bring that up because we see that a version of that graph so often from our clients that at some point it must have been introduced into survey data land because we’ve seen different variations of that from all sorts of different clients over the years.
21:12.74
Jon
Yeah. e
21:17.59
Jon
e
21:18.44
Cole
So when it’s categories that you’re trying to compare, rarely is a line chart going to be a good choice. Every once while a slope graph will do it, but not not in that instance.
21:25.62
Jon
yeah
21:28.25
Jon
it is It is kind of interesting on like the verboten graph because when I, I have the same thing, right? When I teach, it’s not like, I’m like, here’s a whole bunch of rules that you need to follow. Cause you know, it’s a little art, little science.
21:38.75
Jon
So how do you have rules? But then people are like, well, what about pie charts that sum to hundred percent?
21:39.47
Cole
Yeah.
21:42.63
Jon
I’m like, well, I, okay, I guess that’s a rule, but like also like, isn’t, I feel like that’s just common sense, but yeah.
21:48.60
Cole
But like math, yes, math should be right.
21:50.42
Jon
Right. But also like, I guess that puts a lot of onus on people following common sense, which,
21:50.80
Mike
you
21:51.48
Cole
Yeah.
21:56.09
Jon
maybe humans are not very good at to begin with. So maybe that, maybe that would throw, I would say more generally, like more specifically for me, it’s dual axis charts, like those, those line charts with two axes.
22:07.34
Cole
Yeah.
22:09.58
Jon
But again, like there’s always an exception to that rule, right?
22:11.86
Cole
Yes.
22:12.46
Jon
Like Fahrenheit and Celsius, is sort of the classic example, but that being said, I’m, I think I’m, I’m with you.
22:15.57
Cole
Yep.
22:18.94
Jon
Okay. Detour, detour. Let’s come all the way back to the book.
22:22.55
Cole
Where are we going back to?
22:22.92
Jon
Um,
22:23.71
Cole
Okay.
22:24.31
Jon
Yeah. ah ah um Okay.
22:25.70
Mike
Thank you.
22:26.59
Jon
So I wanted to ask, I guess, two questions because we’ve got these 20 different chapters, these kind of 20… Oh, I don’t even want to say 20 different before and afters, right? Because there’s the steps within each…
22:36.98
Cole
For the most part. Yeah.
22:38.15
Jon
Yeah.
22:38.36
Cole
Yeah.
22:38.55
Jon
But the steps within each chapter, right? um But I want to ask, like, do they fall into themes or into categories? um
22:47.16
Cole
Good question.
22:48.02
Jon
And I guess sort of a related question, like, do you think… people should read this cover to cover? Or is this a kind of book where it’s like, I’m having this problem. mean, you always want people to read cover to cover, but you know, would you say, Oh, I’m having this problem. I have a bar chart. I know it’s not, I, even I can’t read it as a creator. Like, should I go to chapter seven?
23:10.71
Jon
So it’s kind of a bunch of questions there embedded, but it’s really about the kind of the overarching theme and organization of the book.
23:16.34
Cole
We, yeah well and one of those that early on was in theme, like with there being clear different topics and then subchapters within that.
23:16.51
Mike
Well, you could you can imagine, John, that we had a lot of discussion about how to organize the the book.
23:22.22
Jon
Oh, I bet. Yeah.
23:23.48
Mike
And it did go through a number of iterations. But I think, yeah.
23:33.88
Jon
who
23:37.43
Jon
Right.
23:39.61
Mike
And then we thought of it more as a a reader where at the beginning, there are more of the basic, more of these simple changes, the less challenging things that you would need to overcome. And we got into some of the more sophisticated makeovers towards the end. But throughout, there are examples where We will do a full, like if you are presenting this, this might be a live presentation.
24:09.63
Mike
There are some where you’re changing just specific aspects of a single slide and there’s, there’s variation throughout, but I would say it gradually gets more and more sophisticated and complex as you go through the book, which I think parallels your own development as a practitioner and somebody who’s applying these lessons.
24:09.70
Jon
Mm-hmm.
24:32.31
Mike
you would feel more comfortable doing them, you know, one at a time or a couple at a time. And then eventually you gain the confidence to use your entire toolkit as necessary on some of the more challenging examples.
24:44.97
Jon
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
24:46.52
Mike
Or Cole mentioned this before is it’s not just limited to a graph or not just limited to a presentation slide deck. It’s sometimes it’s an email, sometimes it’s an infographic, sometimes it’s a combination of things.
24:59.00
Mike
And we wanted to show how you could apply a lot of these lessons to those as well.
25:03.86
Cole
When just back on the themes, we abandoned that because it ended up feeling too forced and we it it wasn’t flowing in the way it needed to flow. So we went we went through a few different reorganizations of content and how we were approaching things. because it didn’t it didn’t all start with the examples. we We kind of approached it in a few different ways. We had the structure that we thought we were going to go down for a bit. We had examples. We also had just topics that we knew we wanted to cover or certain tips that we knew we wanted to share. And it became this triangulation of, all right, where do we have an example that’ll show this one thing? Or we have this example that we really know we want to use. What lessons can we highlight through that? And so we abandoned the thematic approach
25:48.76
Cole
I don’t know, a while before finishing writing. And then even after finishing writing and as we were finishing writing, we were reorganizing things and went through several rounds of that.
25:57.56
Jon
m
25:59.08
Cole
But as Mike mentioned, the general… progression now goes from more straightforward, more simple to more robust, more comprehensive, more nuanced as you move through the chapters of the book.
26:10.79
Cole
But they are each written, they could be read as a standalone where you can flip through and just choose your chapter and you’re going to get lessons.
26:11.41
Jon
Right.
26:18.07
Jon
Right.
26:19.06
Cole
Each chapter starts off by outlining key lessons and shows the before with a little bit of prelude of what’s going on in the scenario, takes you through the process of teaching those lessons that were outlined at the beginning through the given example, and then there’s a recap at the end where you see the lesson lessons fleshed out with more detail.
26:37.12
Cole
And so you’ve got a nice container for each of the chapters.
26:37.70
Jon
Right.
26:41.60
Cole
You certainly can read it through cover to cover, but it’s not necessary.
26:42.42
Jon
Okay. Yeah. I mean, I haven’t, I haven’t obviously read all the way through yet, but so it sounds so, so a person who has just starting with, with data viz could read storytelling with data, get the basics, come in here and read it cover to cover.
27:00.50
Jon
That new person probably would benefit from that. But someone who’s been doing this for a while could start in the middle of the book or just find the things that they are,
27:03.21
Cole
Yes.
27:08.22
Cole
And there is some prelude in the introduction of before and after is like the crash course on storytelling with data.
27:09.14
Jon
facing
27:12.38
Jon
you Yeah.
27:13.58
Cole
and So if you don’t want to add two books to your wish list, but just one, start with before and after because you can you can get some of all of it there.
27:14.32
Jon
Right.
27:18.23
Jon
yeah Yeah.
27:23.13
Jon
So, so when you think about this sort of progression, I’m guessing like at the, for the intro folks, it’s some of the things we’ve been talking about, right? Like, you know,
27:34.04
Jon
you know, bar charts and, you know, line charts, you know, using color well, using font, you know, aligning thing, you know, the sort of the the sort of basics of of design and layout and different chart types.
27:39.74
Cole
Yeah.
27:45.21
Jon
um when you think about the later chapters, what are some of those like core next level skills that you find people are lacking or haven’t, I mean, i don’t want to say lacking because that’s not quite fair, but you haven’t developed as as strongly as some of, some of these other, you know, skills like color and font, that sort of thing.
28:07.22
Cole
I think the biggest opportunity, and I’ll share mine and then Mike, I’ll turn it over to you. Biggest opportunity for improvement just generally is for people to really be communicating with their audience front and center throughout the process from what data they’re looking at in the first place to what they do to it, how they show it, how they communicate it. I think when we see data viz and communications fail, often it’s because that wasn’t taken into account where I was making a graph for myself or for my data and, you know,
28:38.27
Cole
Who cares about, you know if if somebody else can’t understand it, that’s on them.
28:40.26
Jon
Yeah.
28:41.83
Cole
When really, no, we can take a more empathetic approach to how we communicate and really think about how do we make this work for our audience?
28:42.30
Jon
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
28:50.39
Cole
Because you make totally different choices in some situations when that’s the case. And it allows us to communicate more thoughtfully in a way that’s going to be more effective, even though the way that looks may play out totally differently across different scenarios and different audiences.
29:08.44
Jon
eden Like you have that next level strategy that people need.
29:13.56
Mike
Yeah.
29:16.22
Mike
Part of it is letting, not letting the data itself determine the way in which you show the data, because there are often multiple stories or multiple messages with multiple audiences that need to be considered and using the same source material.
29:26.37
Jon
Hmm.
29:38.23
Mike
could lead you into a number of different final versions because each one of those final versions is going to be fit for a specific purpose. And instead of thinking, well, if I have this much data, I should show this much data and it should look, it should be in this type of chart because I’ve, you know, I’ve, I’ve looked through my,
30:00.28
Mike
my matrix of this data plus this need equals this chart.
30:03.64
Jon
Yeah, right.
30:04.16
Mike
Like there are more things that one can do, think about in order to make that communication more effective.
30:04.44
Jon
right
30:11.88
Mike
And that same source data could be something that you end up using to tell multiple stories to different people because they might all need to be told. They just can’t all be told at once.
30:22.78
Mike
And so thinking through what am I trying to do now? And what do I use from my toolkit to make that happen? and also taking into consideration that you can always do something no matter how much time you have available to you, whether you have five minutes or a day, you can always make smart choices about how do I make this message better.
30:34.83
Jon
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
30:45.69
Mike
But also what you choose to do is going to be different depending on if you have five minutes or a day.
30:49.59
Jon
yeah
30:51.28
Mike
So not letting yourself ah pick the one hour solution when you have 10 minutes, because that way lies madness.
30:56.79
Jon
ehi
30:57.42
Cole
Well, just to ground these, to ground some of what Mike said in examples, both of the things he’s talking generally about, there are chapters that map to specifically in before and after.
31:08.53
Cole
So in chapter 17, and both of these are Mike’s chapters, so this makes sense, that he dives into some call center data and shows how the same general data can be customized for totally different audiences.
31:09.25
Jon
Mm-hmm.
31:22.33
Jon
Mm-hmm.
31:22.71
Cole
And I’ve actually used this example a couple of times lately because I think a secondary insight you get out of this is the way it looking at things this way can help shift people from service provider when it comes to, you know, somebody’s coming to you with data, you throw them back the data, they come to you for more data and everything.
31:42.13
Cole
get you out of that cycle where you become more of a strategic partner by really thinking through, okay, here’s the data, but what does my, you know, the person requesting it, what do they actually need?
31:52.46
Cole
What do they care about? How can I make this work for them? And to Mike’s point, that’s going to look different oftentimes for sufficiently different audiences.
32:00.28
Jon
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
32:00.79
Cole
And then ah let’s see, chapter 19, the lessons get into some different time constraints. So key lessons of chapter 19 are tailor your approach to your available time.
32:11.51
Jon
oh
32:13.75
Cole
With five minutes, use your words wisely. With 15 minutes, declutter and add visual cues. With an hour, iterate, refine, or polish. With more time, build a narrative presentation. Then he goes through a scenario with it’s like restaurant franchisee reporting and
32:24.31
Jon
e
32:30.17
Cole
shows what he would do with each of these time blocks and how you could take it from, you know, what was this kind of just okay looking generic report to, depending on the situation, full blown customized presentation to drive behavioral change.
32:44.69
Jon
Mm-hmm.
32:46.87
Jon
um So ah in this theme of like this progression of the of the book itself, but going back also to what we were talking earlier about doing workshops, are you what is your reaction when you come into a firm, you teach sort of like the 101 class and like, oh, this was great, but we want you now to teach a 201 class.
33:01.14
Mike
you
33:06.79
Jon
like what what and And let’s ignore like, you know we want you to come and teach us Tableau or something like that. like they They want like the 201 core data viz class. like What is your, what do you, how do you respond to those requests?
33:20.18
Cole
Oftentimes, the second one that you talk about is getting their examples and doing more hands-on things with the specific scenario.
33:26.78
Jon
Yeah.
33:28.06
Cole
like it It is the before and after book, basically.
33:30.63
Jon
Yeah. Yeah. mean, I have the same reaction. People ask, oh, can you go do a 201? I’m like, 201 is just doing it. Like you just, you got to go start making.
33:36.80
Cole
Yeah. But people don’t want to hear that. Yeah.
33:39.29
Jon
No, no, no. they I mean, they think there’s, I mean, Mike, I think exactly to your point, And I think there’s just human nature. People want like data type plus, i don’t know, whatever the end, end audiences means I should use this graph or, and then write like, yeah, like taste of creativity out of it.
33:54.87
Cole
It takes all the fun out of it. It takes the creativity and the thought. And yeah, the i think if for the person who is looking for that, this maybe isn’t the right field.
33:58.86
Jon
Yeah.
34:07.26
Cole
I don’t know. Is that too?
34:08.38
Mike
But there are people who self-select into analytic careers who are looking for those kinds of rubrics. How many graphs should I include on a slide?
34:14.23
Jon
yeah
34:17.19
Mike
What is the maximum font size I should use?
34:19.03
Jon
yeah yeah
34:20.23
Mike
How many words should I have on the slide?
34:21.98
Cole
Yeah. How many slides should there be?
34:22.35
Mike
And
34:23.42
Cole
Yeah.
34:23.77
Mike
Right.
34:23.86
Jon
yeah
34:24.34
Mike
Like these are things that for many people provide frameworks that they can rely on because they don’t want to have to think through all of those choices every time. And I can empathize with that.
34:32.92
Jon
yeah
34:34.81
Cole
Yeah.
34:34.87
Mike
But when the answer is, I don’t know what looks right, or, you know, in certain situations more and in certain situations less, but not too many, you do this enough and you will understand.
34:38.94
Jon
yeah
34:47.42
Mike
And that’s not a very, um,
34:47.97
Jon
Right.
34:50.55
Mike
You can’t monetize that advice particularly well.
34:53.62
Jon
No.
34:53.67
Mike
So we don’t often give that specific advice, but but telling people, well, here’s the thought process I go through.
34:53.94
Jon
Right.
34:56.98
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
35:02.97
Jon
Yeah.
35:03.00
Mike
And this is, if you start to apply this approach, this will start to become second nature to you, which is a nice way of saying you just have to practice it, but you don’t have to practice all of it right away.
35:12.03
Cole
Use this
35:12.23
Jon
Mm-hmm.
35:14.90
Mike
all of the time. I’m giving you these tools that you can then have and learn and practice when it seems appropriate to do so. And you do the little things first, then when the little things become second nature, then you do the bigger things.
35:29.19
Mike
And that’s much more satisfying than just saying, consult this manual for how many words you can have on your slide.
35:29.46
Jon
Yeah.
35:35.60
Jon
Yeah. Yeah.
35:37.98
Cole
use this template
35:39.19
Jon
Yeah, here’s the answer, right?
35:39.16
Mike
Yeah.
35:40.55
Jon
Just follow.
35:40.84
Mike
Yeah.
35:41.07
Jon
Just follow.
35:42.10
Cole
Seven, the answer is seven.
35:43.38
Jon
The answer is seven. Yeah, it’s 42.
35:45.66
Mike
Yes.
35:45.94
Jon
So, um okay So everybody knows where they can find you. So storytellingwithdata.com. But before I let you go, um i wanted to ask about the Storytelling with Data community because my guess is that um this book really…
36:03.67
Jon
you know hits the hits the mark with that community, especially because you’ve been doing these sort of like before and afters for so for so long, for years now, if I if i have my time correctly.
36:13.91
Jon
um so um ah So I guess I’d like, and maybe Cole, you could do this, um is to for folks who don’t know what the community is, what it is and how they could get ah get involved, especially once they have this book and you know maybe want to
36:23.00
Cole
Yeah. Yeah.
36:28.60
Jon
I don’t know, I feel like you’ve both mentioned like getting feedback from people. And sometimes I have found that people sometimes are kind of maybe embarrassed to show stuff to their colleagues. So they’re like, you know, which I think is kind of a culture thing that’s sad and organized. I find kind of sad in organizations if you’re scared to show your colleagues something that you’re working on. But anyway, um so there’s this opportunity for people out there to to work with others. So maybe you could tell us about um the community and and and how they can you know pull all this together.
36:58.62
Cole
Our online Storytelling with Data community, which you can find at community.storytellingwithdata.com or go to our website, you’ll find links there, was really built as a space where people can practice and come together who are interested in building skills when it comes to making good graphs and communicating effectively with data. So we have a number of ways to practice in a low-risk environment and exchange feedback. We do a monthly challenge where we give you a certain, you know might be a certain graph type or certain data type or some different things to try to solve. Mike, what’s our current one? Do you know off the top of your head?
37:40.57
Mike
Well, the current one as of record, which would be last month’s as you hear it, was how do you visualize something when the target is below a goal rather than when something, where lower is better?
37:42.62
Cole
Ah, true.
37:51.48
Cole
Yeah, or where lower is better. Yeah.
37:53.82
Jon
Lowers better. Yeah.
37:54.68
Cole
Yeah. So things like that.
37:55.60
Jon
Right.
37:56.38
Cole
So there might be a topic of like this and then you can use whatever data you would like or sometimes we provide some and it’s just, again, meant to be a place for people to practice.
38:03.25
Jon
Hmm.
38:06.90
Cole
So oftentimes people use it to practice a new tool or maybe a technique that they haven’t done before. And then as soon as you submit yours, you’re able to see and comment on everybody else’s participation.
38:20.13
Cole
We also have an exercise bank that you can go back through and solve any of the exercises. And there, when you submit your solution, it unlocks the solution from the Storytong with Data team and from anybody else who’s done the exercise.
38:33.81
Cole
there’s some great learning in terms of just comparing and contrasting. And the exercises, for the most part, you’re provided everything you need, the data, the scenario, and you’re just meant to, you know, you five or 10 minutes free to practice something, it can be a nice space to do that.
38:41.65
Jon
Yeah.
38:48.86
Cole
We also, John, to your point of people being sometimes maybe intimidated to share their work in progress at work, if you can anonymize appropriately, we have places where you can get and give feedback on people’s data visualizations, and it’s just…
39:05.03
Cole
It’s a really constructive place to be able to practice and share things in a way that allows you to get input from others.
39:11.59
Jon
Yeah.
39:15.81
Cole
And also the the process of giving other people feedback is a fantastic way to learn and solidify approaches and get your language right.
39:26.21
Cole
So that can be useful for folks as well. Mike, i don’t know if there’s anything you want to add on any of that.
39:29.62
Jon
Terrific. Yeah. Did we miss anything?
39:33.34
Mike
I would say this is top of mind because I have one scheduled for later on today is we also there’s a paid level for people in the community if they choose to, although basically everything is available for free.
39:37.94
Jon
Yeah.
39:44.98
Mike
But one of the things at that paid level is you can do office hours with the storytellers. And I have an office hour coming up. this afternoon.
39:51.63
Jon
Mm.
39:52.14
Mike
So that is when you want feedback. If you want feedback in a more private environment with somebody on the team, that is a good way to do that. That’s how we spend almost all of our office hours is giving feedback on people’s specific work.
40:06.38
Jon
That’s pretty good. um Terrific. Well, thanks to you both, Cole, Mike. Great to see you both. ah Congratulations on the book.
40:12.24
Cole
having us.
40:13.68
Jon
ah Cole, congratulations on the on the Storytelling with Data re-release.
40:17.08
Cole
Thank you.
40:17.98
Jon
um And I hope you guys have a great 2026.
40:22.39
Mike
Same to you, John.
40:22.52
Cole
You as well.
40:22.95
Mike
Thanks for having us.
40:23.38
Cole
Thanks, John.