Exercise: 4X4 Model
Lesson 4 from: Data Storytelling: Deliver Insights via Compelling StoriesBill Shander
Exercise: 4X4 Model
Lesson 4 from: Data Storytelling: Deliver Insights via Compelling StoriesBill Shander
Lessons
Introduction
1Class Introduction
03:29 2Do The Exercises
00:37 3Communication Challenges and Solutions
05:20 4Exercise: 4X4 Model
04:31 5Exercise Solution: 4X4 Model
03:25 6Introduction - Quiz
Thinking Like a Communicator
The Power of Story
06:48 8Six Ways to Tap Into Your Inner Storyteller
12:32 9The Importance of Understanding Your Audience
03:42 10How to Understand Your Audience
04:35 11How to Embrace Emotion (to review)
04:38 12How to Tap Into Your Inherent Creativity
05:55 13Exercise: An Emotional Story
01:29 14Exercise Solution: An Emotional Story
01:12 15Thinking Like a Communicator - Quiz
Telling Data Stories
16Basic Data Analytics Tactics
08:54 17Basic Journalism Tactics
04:56 18Defining Your Story
05:37 19Sketching and Storyboarding
07:05 20Use Your Words
04:20 21Telling Data Stories - Quiz
Essential Design Principles
22The Power of Visuals
07:44 23How to Pick the Right Chart for Your Data
05:19 24Exercise: Chart Selection
06:27 25Exercise: Visualization
02:59 26Basic Chart Designs Principles
08:21 27Research Driven Design Principles
06:27 28Exercise: A Data Story
03:50 29Essential Design Principles - Quiz
And Now What?
30Great Data Stories for Your Inspiration
05:53 31Tips and Tricks
03:53 32How to Sell Data Storytelling Services
03:56 33A Conversation Guide for Talking to Prospects About Data Storytelling Projects
05:30 34Course Summary
02:48Final Quiz
35Final Quiz
Lesson Info
Exercise: 4X4 Model
The four x 4 model is a simple but fundamental idea. You're probably already doing it if you're a professional communicator, but I find it really helpful to exercise those muscles a bit. So I recommend you do this exercise before you continue with the course. I'm working with data from fivethirtyeight, which is a great website delivering data driven stories and all kinds of topics. One of the many great things about 5:38 is that they've open sourced a lot of their data sets. For instance, they did a story a while back based on a survey of airline customers. The survey was focused on the etiquette of flying. It only asked a few simple questions to try to get answers to what activities people find as acceptable and not while flying. So here's the exercise, download the flying etiquette dataset from GIT hub at the URL on the screen, feel free to read the Fivethirtyeight article as well if you want to Now imagine you're going to be doing another piece on that same data. I want you to think...
about the four by Four content layers. You're going to create Task. one is to come up with at least two headlines, water cooler moments for this report, but first you have to decide what publication and medium your headlines are for for instance, maybe you're going to create something for a parenting magazine or maybe it's an internal report for the Chief marketing officer of a discount airline. Think carefully about your medium and audience and right at least two headlines for your story. Try to write one that's more serious and factual, more like a new york Times headline and write at least one. That's more absurd and salacious. A new york post headline. Even if your publication is serious, absurd, funny headlines will help you inject some humor or humanity or cleverness into your more serious headline. And the opposite is also true. Even if you're writing for a tabloid, the more serious headlines will keep you honest, focusing on the facts. Task two is to come up with a single image, a photo or an illustration that could act as the hero image for the publications mention in your target medium. Try to think of long lists of keywords that brought you to your headline or keywords that are involved in the focus of the story you're creating from this report. Again, be salacious and silly or be serious, but when brainstorming and searching google or wherever you go for images, don't hold back, go on tangents, get weird. Okay, embrace the creative process and try to come up with a lot of very different ideas before settling on one visual that will live at the top of your page or go out with a tweet to promote the publication. So, your third task is broken into two parts. I want you to think of the outline for the cafe content, the short article you might write to introduce the data to your audience. This is more of a story boarding exercise. So you'll just decide to like, say 3 to 5 key points you need to make in your piece and put them in order and title them including any subtitles or ideas. So when you come back to write this in your fictional future, you'll know what you're writing. The two parts of this task are one to create an outline based on the idea of writing cafe content, that's more of a summary of the data set for your audience, focusing on what you think they'll find most interesting. And then to create another outline based on the idea of cafe content that's much more narrowly focused instead of an overview of the data, it's focusing in on some small sub story within it that your audience will find interesting. These are two very different stories. Okay, you may find that your headlines from the first part of this exercise will help you during this process and feel free to come up with the other headlines while doing this outlining If you want to replace some you came up with earlier as an example, the second outline might be focused on just how rude people flying with Children are considered, or it might be a drill down into a certain demographics, opinions about flying or some other, much more focused story like these. This exercise will get you thinking about how to turn data into stories, that's what the four x 4 is really all about. Turning longer form content into shorter form content and thinking about the organization and flow of that content. To ultimately entice people into the full length form of the content. Stories are a great way to do this. We're gonna be talking a lot more about this, but this is a perfect place to start.