AlignAI and The University of Cincinnati Team Up to Offer a Data Story Telling Course

The Data Storytelling workshop teaches the fundamentals of effective visualization, with emphasis on building a compelling narrative around the information you want to communicate. You’ll learn to understand the context, choose an effective visual, identify and eliminate clutter, focus attention, and tell a story. These lessons are made concrete through numerous real-world examples, and participants get hands-on practice in an interactive session.  The goals of our workshops are to enable you to bring data to life and use it to communicate a story to an audience, with a focus on simplicity and ease of interpretation.

PREREQUISITE:
No experience required however familiarity with data visualization tools and methods is helpful.

Attendees Learn How To:

· Understand the importance of context

· Determine the appropriate type of graph

· Recognize and eliminate the clutter

· Direct your audience's attention

· Think like a designer when visualizing data

· Leverage the power of storytelling to help your message resonate with your audience

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DATES AND TIMES

This class will be delivered on-line in two, 3-hour sessions  through Zoom with a live instructor.  Dates and times for this class are:

• Monday September 12- 12:45 PM - 4:15PM
• Wednesday September 14 - 12:45 PM - 4:15PM

A good internet connection and dual screens are recommended to maximize the learning experience.  Links to the Zoom Training and class materials will be sent to registered attendees approximately 3-5 days before the class.

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Certificate of Completion

A Certificate of Completion is provided with this course showing number of contact hours (instruction), and field of study as "Information Technology" for continuing education purposes. This course provides 6 contact hours and is equivalent to .6 CEU's.

The term CEU is not a trademarked term; therefore, any educational institution may use it to describe their courses. Professions and industries usually regulate their approved continuing education within their bylaws and not one institute or accrediting body has become a standard to accept in this regard. Professionals should always consult their Association or regulating body prior to embarking on continuing education and not assume a CEU will be accepted as part of their professional development.

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TOPICS COVERED IN THIS CLASS

Learning Path

Introduction to Data Storytelling
Human brains are wired to remember stories. But real decision-making is spurred by emotion of story combined with the logic of data, influenced by visuals. In this module, we’ll take a look at various approaches, chart types and visualizations used to express insights and inspire action.

Design
Visual interactivity with the data is a key component of storytelling and makes finding higher dimensional relationships in complex datasets more intuitive. In this module, explore how visual interactivity with the data makes higher dimensional relationships in complex datasets more intuitive and debate whether interactivity in visualization is a hindrance or help for larger audiences.

Information hierarchy (Focusing on an audience on what's most important and only revealing details as needed)

Build
Why does storytelling matter when delivering data to your audiences? What are the principles of storytelling that you should implement into your visuals? In this module, we’ll examine aspects of storytelling and how to structure your story to effectively communicate the right insights to your key stakeholders.

Visual display (Position, size, color, contrast, shape, typography, iconography, legends and sources)

Interactivity (Why interactive vs. static experience, how to provide productive experiences)

Ship
Any time we create a visualization, we create an abstract model of the data. As storytellers, we must ensure that the data is represented as truthfully and objectively as possible because they have the ability to mislead, deceive, or confuse. In this module, we’ll take a look at some problematic visualizations and how to avoid misrepresenting data.

Context for the audience, risk documentation & communication, ongoing maintenance of datasets & visualizations

Instructors

Nick Woo

Nick approaches analytics & AI as an integrated production system to drive intelligent business decisions. He has experience in the aerospace, automotive, non-profit, food and insurance industries and he’s built operational analytics functions from the ground up. Across all sectors, the main constant and key to success in analytics has been the people. Nick works with teams to close the knowledge gap between data ‘producers’ and data ‘consumers’ throughout operations. He enjoys building skillsets and standing up internal communities to create centers of excellence, and emphasizes experimentation to raise the overall capability of the organization. Nick’s mission is to add value to people’s lives and empower them to do the same.

Kristy Wedel

Kristy strives to help build a culture of data literacy and make it easier to identify actionable insights from data. She has over ten years of experience in the analytics and visualization space, developing solutions for marketing, finance, and other business units in healthcare, finance, retail and non-profit organizations. She is passionate about partnering with stakeholders to create solutions that truly meet business needs. She also has experience organizing internal analytics communities that encourage collaboration and awareness between decentralized teams. Kristy works with teams on projects in an iterative approach looking for opportunities for process improvements along the way.

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