用趋势图来制作一个引人注目的数据故事

An data narrative can prompt the audience to take action or embrace change, and it should consist of the following components:

• Clear and easily understandable visualization
• Big idea (thesis statement)
• Call to action (CTA)

Alright, if you didn’t get the clear and easily understandable visualization right in the first part, you’ll fail. Yup, there’s no shortcut here. One of the easily understandable visualizations is a trend chart, and you can use it to highlight key insights that support your theme. This blog has various trend chart examples to enhance your understanding. So keep reading. Simple and straightforward charts, such as trend charts, can really make your data story convincing. Remember, people don’t like to bear cognitive load. So transforming all content into readily available fruits can greatly help persuade your audience to take the action you want. Or the suggestions you make aimed at inspiring change. We’ve summed up strategies and tips for transforming data stories into engaging narratives. This includes how best to deploy trend charts into data narratives. These tips have been tested and validated by thousands of data visualization experts worldwide.

What is an Emotional Trend Chart?

A trend chart displays data that changes over time, while an emotional trend chart shows data that changes over time as well as the positivity or negativity of the data response. There’s the ChartExpo library, which includes multiple charts, and the emotional trend chart is one of them. You can use this chart to show trends of variables changing over time. Additionally, this chart uses past trends to provide predictions. For example, in the diagram below, you can see references to customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction related to a product over time. In the same chart, trends and their emotions can be easily analyzed. Trend charts themselves aren’t that powerful. But compared to other charts (like bar charts), they provide deeper insights. For example, the chart above represents a trend chart merged into a bar chart. You can easily highlight trends or even predict the future by inferring trend lines simply based on past performance. Trend charts are also known as price action curves by hedge funds and forex brokers. Price action graphs can be accessed in the Meta Trader 4 platform used for online trading of currencies and commodities. Essentially, most forex traders, including institutional hedge funds, use past price trends to predict future prices of currencies and commodities (like oil and gold). We’re talking billions of dollars invested based on forecasts based on past price trends. Trends can be positive (increasing) or negative (decreasing). As shown above, it can never be flat. Emphasizing growth or lack of growth is very easy, especially when presenting data narratives to the audience. Now that you understand trend charts, let’s move on to the next section, which is about finding insights in these visualizations.

Elements of a Well-Structured Trend Chart

Additional trend charts for your data story should have the following attributes:

• A clear title to describe the chart’s theme.
• Labels on the vertical y-axis and horizontal x-axis to describe measurement values and time.
• A legend to differentiate plotted lines.
• An appropriate scale narrow enough to show changes.
• Avoid clutter to prevent confusion and blur key insights.
• An appropriate time frame.
• Significant peak symbols, if any.
• Targets or goals observable on the chart for reference.
• Trend lines showing fluctuations in data.

So why are emotional trend charts important to you? That’s what you’ll learn in the next section.

Can the Same Chart Present Emotional and Non-Emotional Trends?

Charts are a visual representation of data that can show different analyses with different data. Not all charts can be used for every set of data, but there are some visualizations that can serve multiple purposes. Emotional analysis is a special case, and the ChartExpo library has a specific chart called the Emotional Trend Chart, which can represent both emotional and non-emotional trends. Later in this blog, you’ll learn how to create such charts.

What are the Golden Benefits of Trend Charts?

The benefits of trend charts are few.

Benefit #1: Extremely Easy to Understand

Due to their simplicity, explaining emotional trend charts is very easy. These charts allow your audience to understand data, view interesting insights, and arrive at conclusions quickly. Remember, the backbone of any attention-grabbing info is its simplicity. So, use simple visualizations to drive your audience to read more of your story, and most importantly, take action based on your recommendations.

Benefit #2: You Can Use It to Uncover Patterns

Emotional trend charts enable your audience to easily see emerging trends. This can compel them to accept change or take action quickly based on your recommendations. When presented graphically, trends, changes, and outliers make more sense. This is because the visual effect makes it easier for you to identify strongly related parameters. Some correlations, relationships, and distribution patterns in the data may not be as obvious. You need charts like emotional trend charts to help you discover relationships you may not even know exist.

Benefit #3: Storytelling is More Engaging

Emotional trend charts are one of the revolutionary visualizations that can help create meaningful stories from data. Storytelling is crucial for persuasion and simplifying communication. You can bet on emotional trend charts to help you interact with customers and teams. Conveying information in a story is more engaging and easier to understand. You’re more likely to remember images and stories than typical words and numbers.

Benefit #4: Speed Up the Decision-Making Process

Humans process visual images much faster than text. Additionally, charts are easier for your brain to process than reading text and numbers in tables. Emotional trend charts can significantly speed up the decision-making process for your audience. According to the Wharton School, simplified data visualizations can shorten business meetings by up to 24%. Why? As we mentioned before, to persuade people, you should strategically combine logos (logic), ethos (emotion), and pathos (personality). Charts are the carriers of insights that appeal to the logical part of our brains. Remember, we make decisions based on emotions and use logic to justify them. So, you need to provide insights supported by data for your audience to prove that their actions are right. Now that you understand the benefits of trend charts, let’s move to the next section. You’ll discover where you can apply these charts to make the most of your data.

Where Can You Apply Trend Charts?

You can apply this chart in many business areas:

Trend Chart Example: Survey Storytelling

Survey data storytelling uses data insights in visualizations to tell stories about people’s perceptions, opinions, and emotions towards brands. You can use emotional trend charts to tell stories about market sentiment trends. By quickly looking at trend charts, it’s very easy to understand what’s happening. For example, in the image above, the overall trend of positive sentiment is increasing.

Trend Chart Example: Video Data Storytelling

Video data storytelling is simply telling a captivating story using the metrics data you’re tracking. When you have videos on YouTube, you’d want to know how many people are interacting with them. People’s responses of likes or dislikes describe their appreciation of the video. By looking at the chart above, you’ll find that likes increased over time. In June, the least dislikes came, while in August, the most likes came.

Trend Chart Example: Income and Expenditure Storytelling

So how do you create a compelling survey story? Highlight key insights! Displaying key insights allows your audience to easily pick insights. That’s what engaging data stories are all about. Look at the chart below: For example, in the trend chart above, the best-performing months were August 2020, September 2020, and June 2021, as indicated in the red box.

The Best Tool for Visualizing Data Using Emotional Trend Charts

With the growth of data resources, more click-and-drag tools are emerging to help you understand data easily without spending too much time. The solution isn’t to get rid of your Google Sheets, but rather enhance them with add-ons. Remember, you need a visualization chart that conveys insights easily so that you create engaging data stories. There’s an easy-to-use data visualization tool that allows you to create clear and engaging data stories. This app makes charts that you can easily customize and download. This easy-to-use and cost-effective add-on is called ChartExpo.

What is ChartExpo?

> ChartExpo is an affordable and easy-to-use Google Sheets add-on that creates simple and readable visualizations for your data stories. So, if you’re looking for a data visualization tool to create easy-to-understand charts that seamlessly complement your data stories, don’t hesitate any longer. So how does ChartExpo help you create persuasive data narratives?

ChartExpo Loads Over 50 Different Chart Templates

This budget-friendly data visualization tool contains more than 50 other chart templates for you to choose the best chart for your story. This includes emotional trend charts.

Freely Highlight Key Points

Additionally, using ChartExpo, you can freely change the chart to align with your data story. Thus, you don’t have to make an effort to emphasize key insights that support the main idea. Other Benefits: – ChartExpo plugin for Google Sheets offers a 7-day free trial. – Essentially, if you’re not satisfied with the tool within a week, you can choose to opt-out quickly as you did when registering for a trial. – After the trial period, access to over 50 chart templates is only $10 per month. – You can 100% guarantee that your computer or Google Sheets won’t slow down because of this lightweight plugin. – You can export easily readable and intuitive charts in JPEG and PNG (the world’s most widely used image sharing formats).

How to Install the ChartExpo Plugin in Google Sheets?

There are two ways to install the ChartExpo plugin for Google Sheets. The first method is to visit the Google Workspace Marketplace and type “ChartExpo” in the search bar. Click on the ChartExpo tool and then on the blue Install button on the results page. This will start the installation process. You may need to log in to your Google account and accept permissions for the plugin. Once done, the plugin will be installed and ready to use the next time you open Google Sheets. Alternatively, you can download ChartExpo directly from your Google Sheets app. To get started, click on Add-ons in the top toolbar. In the small menu that appears, select Get add-ons. Search for ChartExpo in the bar and click on it when the ChartExpo tool appears in the results. Click on the blue install button. Again, you may need to accept some permissions, and you may need to verify your Google account. Now open your Google Sheets app. Open a sheet and click on the Add-ons menu. You’ll see the option “ChartExpo – Best Data Visualization Tool” in the dropdown menu. Once you select it, you’ll find this section on your Google Sheets. Now click on create a new chart, and you’ll see six different chart groups. Click on the Emotional Analysis Chart to expand it. Click on the Emotional Analysis Chart to access the trend chart as shown.

How to Create an Emotional Trend Chart Using the ChartExpo Plugin in Google Sheets?

Let’s create a scenario using survey data. Suppose you run an e-commerce store and you want to establish the emotional sentiment of your target market using data. So, you conducted a brief survey on your thank you page to ask customers about what they like and dislike: – Customer service – Shipping – Price – Selection – Return policy – Ordering process – Communication Essentially, you want to use data to understand how converting customers perceive your brand. The key metrics are the number of likes and dislikes. The main goal of this exercise is to optimize your sales channels to drive more conversions and reduce churn. Let’s use the data below for the scenario. |Topic |Positive |Negative | |—————|———-|———-| |Customer Service|67 |33 | |Shipping |60 |40 | |Price |75 |25 | |Selection |85 |15 | |Return Policy |30 |70 | |Ordering Process|75 |15 | |Communication |90 |10 | First, paste all the data into a Google Sheet. Decide to visualize this data. So everyone can easily understand it. Then, click Add-ons > ChartExpo > Open and then go to the Sentiment Analysis Charts and click on Sentiment Trend Charts. Select the sheet name. Click on Add New Metric and select the columns with numerical values (Count). In our example, the metrics are the number of likes and dislikes. Click Add New Dimension and choose the Column. Click Create Chart… BOOM! You have a beautiful emotional trend chart. Check out the resulting chart below. Insights: The least liked aspect by the e-commerce brand is the return policy. The most liked aspects of the e-commerce brand are the selection and communication with customers. Recommendation: It’s essential to simplify the return policy to reduce dissatisfaction of converting customers.

Visualizing Video Data

As mentioned before, you can use emotional trend charts to visualize your video data for storytelling. Imagine you operate a YouTube channel for your brand. You’ve been using this channel to tell engaging stories about your promotions. You want to use data to measure how your target market perceives your brand. The key metrics you’ll use are the number of likes and dislikes. The dimension is time. Remember, the process of visualizing data using ChartExpo is similar to survey data storytelling. Let’s use the data below for the scenario. |Video |Likes |Dislikes | |——-|———-|———-| |March |36405 |17641 | |April |36137 |18853 | |May |30712 |18294 | |June |33374 |5412 | |July |34059 |15268 | |August |39846 |15689 | So how does the process of visualizing the above data using emotional trend charts look like? Let’s see the resulting chart. Insights: The best month for promoting brand stories based on the number of likes and dislikes is June. June had the lowest dislikes.