Why stories matter. Visual storytelling

Once upon a time… Almost all of us remember this awesome feeling when your parent opened the book and read these words. It’s like you are on the verge of something amazing, something exciting, something fabulous. And as we grow up, we do not lose our thirst for stories.

It is in our nature to need stories. They are our earliest sciences, a kind of people-physics. Their logic is how we naturally think. They configure our biology, and how we feel, in ways long essential for our survival. Storytelling has even been referred to as “the world’s second-oldest profession”.

Like our language instinct, a story drive — an inborn hunger for story hearing and story making — emerges untutored universally in healthy children. Every culture bathes their children in stories to explain how the world works and to engage and educate their emotions.

Storytelling has been the buzzword off and on since advertising became a thing. It’s always coming out of the buzzword pile because, at the end of the day, it’s a timeless skill. Stories have been an essential driver of change throughout human history.

“The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor,”

says Jonathan Haidt. Certainly, we use logic inside stories better than we do outside. Nature shaped us to be ultra-social, and hence to be sharply attentive to character and plot. We are adapted to physiologically interact with stories. They are a key way in which our ruly culture configures our nature.

Why should you tell stories during your presentations? It’s simple, because:

1. The brain is more engaged, stories are more memorable. The researchers suggest that in order to better comprehend a story, we ground the activities we’re hearing about within our own real-world experiences. This theory is strengthened by the discovery of the so-called ‘neural coupling’ effect — incredibly similar patterns of activation in the brains of the storyteller and the listener found in a study where participants told unrehearsed anecdotes from their own lives. The effect disappeared, however, when the listeners’ attention wandered or they failed to understand the events of the story.
2. Stories trigger an emotional response. When we hear information we activate the part of our brain responsible for processing language. All we’re doing is taking in the words and figuring out what they mean. But when we hear stories, our brain acts as if we’re feeling the stories. In one study at the University of Washington in St. Louis, researchers studied people’s brain activity while they read a story about a boy named Raymond. What they found was amazing: when Raymond picked up an object, the neurons responsible for hand movements in the participants’ brains fired. And when Raymond looked at what was around him, the neurons related to vision fired, too. So, as you can ensure, when we hear stories, our brain acts as if we’re living them.
3. Emotions drive most consumer decisions.
4. Stories inspire people to take actions.
5. Stories make presentations better. Stories make ideas stick. Stories help us persuade. Savvy leaders tell stories to inspire us, motivate us. (That’s why so many politicians tell stories in their speeches.) They realize that “what you say” is often moot compared to “how you say it.” (Again, for better or worse.)

But where to start? What do you have to do to develop a great story? Follow the next steps:

1. Establish your goal.
2. Line up your story with your audience. Know your audience, research it. That’s because you have to connect emotionally with your audience. And you can’t do it if you don’t know who your listeners might be. By getting to know your audience, you’re getting to know the main character of your story.

In a Harvard Business Review article titled “€œHow to Tell a Story with Data,” Dell Executive Strategist Jim Stikeleather segments listeners into five main audiences: novice, generalist, management, expert, and executive. The novice is new to a subject but doesn’€™t want oversimplification. The generalist is aware of a topic but looks for an overview and the story’€™s major themes. The management seeks in-depth, actionable understanding of a story’€™s intricacies and interrelationships with access to detail. The expert wants more exploration and discovery and less storytelling. And the executive needs to know the significance and conclusions of weighted probabilities.

1. So the next step is to craft a story. And you know that every story consists of three default parts: beginning, middle and end. Don’t forget that it’s extremely important to choose the first and the last words carefully. We never get the second chance to make a good first impression. Think about any of your favorite books. And imagine that its beginning was totally boring or exceptional ordinary. Awful? Sure.
   You also need to include 5 essential elements to your story: character, opposition, exposition, journey, conclusion. In other words, you have to create a hero (it can be a concept like saving the environment or an object like an app that increases your productivity) and an antagonist — the troublemaker, if you will. Then provide enough details (not too much, don’t let your audience get lost or, worst, bored) to transport your audience inside your story. Carry your audience through the whole story till the end. Keep in mind that the most important part of storytelling in a presentation is that the audience needs to be directly involved with the ending itself. Make this connection as clear as can be by the very last slide. Definitely, include a call to action — but make it inspiring so people will want to act.
2. All this sounds like a rocket science but it’s not. Just give you mind some freedom, get to work your creativity and use your “fairy tale” experience to make your story unique and exciting.

So your presentation and your story are almost perfect. But there is no limit for perfection. What can you do to make presentation unforgettable? Make it visual.

We already knew that human brain actually processes visuals 60,000 times faster than text. We not only respond more quickly to images, but we also have a more emotive connection to visuals.

What can you visualize in your presentation? Almost everything. For instance, the data.

Jonathan Harris, the creator of We Feel Fine and Whale Hunt, considers himself a storyteller first and a visualization designer second:

“I think people have begun to forget how powerful human stories are, exchanging their sense of empathy for a fetishistic fascination with data, networks, patterns, and total information… Really, the data is just part of the story. The human stuff is the main stuff, and the data should enrich it.”

Stanford University Professor of Marketing Jennifer L. Aaker states “€œWhen data and stories are used together, they resonate with audiences on both an intellectual and emotional level.”€

Compared to computers, human mind is weak at performing calculations but much stronger at recognizing patterns. As datasets get larger and more complicated only the most skilled are able to derive meaning. Visualizing data presents an opportunity to break down these barriers and translate data into judgment.

To visualize your data you can use charts, graphs, timelines, maps (heat maps too), infographic, or other types of visuals. Check some tools that may help you to create these visuals: Excel (for all kind of graphs, charts, and tables), Photoshop or/and Illustrator (infographics, charts, graphs), Piktochart or Infogr.am, Google Charts and Google Sheets, Timeline JS (slideshow-based timelines), ZingChart (animated graphics and charts).

But it’s not enough to have tools and ideas we all know how it is important to have inspiration. So we’ve found some great examples of visualization for you. Read it here.