How to Use Text Visualizations to Tell a Story

The modern world of the internet and all associated things is a world of data. Corporations and organizations use this data daily to make key decisions based on such data for their interests. Individually, a customer makes an informed decision based on this data. Telling a story from this data is a key requirement to save time and understand the data quickly.

Storytelling is an art that requires nuance and articulation to paint a picture from words. All this data around us is begging to be explained, formulated into a story, and told to the public. However, since there’s so much data around us, it is difficult to visualize it. This is where text visualizations come into play which makes our lives easier as data can be interpreted easily. The question is how to use text visualizations to tell an understandable story. Let’s find out in the next few paras.

Text Visualization – How Does it Work?

Text visualization is the technique whereby complex information in the form of text is converted into charts, graphs, and tables for easy understanding. This text-to-visuals transformation is text visualization, and it plays a key role in modern decision-making for large organizations and businesses. As stated earlier, simple text analysis techniques aren't offering the full picture with the large amounts of data to be analyzed.

Text visualization offers a respite from sifting through unstructured data and trying to understand it even in its somewhat refined form. Telling a story for everyone to understand becomes much easier with text visualizations as it paints a picture of what the data represents and its key findings. These text visualizations reveal patterns and trends that are hard to decipher from raw text.

The first step of any text-to-visual transformation is to collect lots of data. Courtesy of the internet and various social media platforms, data collection is no more a problem. However, what happens to this data and how to interpret this data quickly represents the real challenge. First, the data is put through text analysis software, including NLP or natural language processing . It is a subfield of software sciences which enables machines to interpret raw text like humans.

The next step involves collating these text analysis reports and converting them into visual aids. Many online tools and software offer a variety of outputs for you to select from. However, the type of visualization depends on the data provided. Text visualization quickly gives a layman the gist of any dataset with concise accuracy. It identifies trends, patterns, and frequency of occurring for various key textual elements.

Understanding the Types of Text Visualization

Text visualization helps extract useful data from unstructured data by employing latest algorithms. There are many text visualization types that help put the context behind the text and help organizations analyze data efficiently. Some techniques online platforms employ to create text visualizations include word cloud maker, heat maps, network diagrams, tree maps, etc. We will discuss some of these shortly, while subsequent paras will shed light on which one to use in which scenario.

Word clouds

Displaying the frequency of particular words visually in any given text is done through word clouds. Here the word cloud generator distinguishes higher-frequency words by depicting them in a larger font, while lower-frequency words are shown in a smaller size. It is an important technique that classifies raw data into different keywords, which shows the main themes within a body of text.

Heat Maps

A graphical representation of text based on different colors shows the varying frequency of certain words in the text. Some data visualization tools, free of cost, offer these visualizations and distinguish different frequencies of words by different shades of colors. It is a perfect way to quickly analyze a body of text by finding out which words appear more and thus point towards the recurring theme of a text.

Network Diagrams

Another data visualization tool is the network diagram representing different entities in an interconnected network. Each entity is drawn as a node, and link lines show which nodes are connected to another node. Thus, two nodes connected by a link show a relationship between such entities. Hence this text visualization tool quickly elaborates the linkages between different entities that you can view at a glance.

Tree Maps

A tree map is a text visualization method by depicting hierarchical data via nested rectangles showing the individual entity's value and position in the overall hierarchy. The larger rectangle shows the first step in the hierarchy and often has a higher value. Different color shades are used to differentiate between components with values written in boxes for a quick study of the data.

Some Examples of Text Visualization in Storytelling

Text visualization effectively transforms raw unstructured text into useful pictorial forms, which can then be analyzed on the go. The unstructured data may represent vast data which is then summarized graphically for easy understanding of the complex phenomenon. Many examples of effective text visuals help individuals and organizations alike to bolster their interests. Let’s look at how different types of data can be visualized effectively for the purpose of storytelling.

Visualizing Survey Data

The art of storytelling requires a clear and concise narration of a phenomenon. Text visualization tools offer a solution to understand complex survey data, which is summarized into an understandable story form. Survey data usually consists of large amounts of unstructured data, which can be easily analyzed by putting the data through top text visualization platforms to make bar charts and graphs.

Visualizing Social Media Data

Sentiment analysis is a common text analysis tool used to extract vast amounts of social media data. Text visualization is a prime example of a tool that can further refine the analysis made by sentiment analysis tools to help businesses make informed decisions.

Visualizing Text Data

Textual data in its raw form can be frustrating to analyze as it may require processing such textual data first. It is impossible for raw text data to be analyzed manually; thus, text visualizations performed through top text visualization platforms are your best bet to get a clear picture of such raw text input.

Visualizing Business Data

Time is of the essence for businesses, and thus they require each and every second that could be saved to be saved. Thus, it is vital that such business data be made suitable for analysis. Text visualizations are the perfect way to make such business data into an easily understandable form.

Tips & Tricks for Visualizing Data with Text

While technology may resolve our most pressing problems these days, it must be used smartly. Extracting tons of data and then analyzing it is a feat only possible by modern technology; however, the human element is still required to accurately use text visuals to tell a story.

Text visualization is no different, as it is a tool that requires careful consideration to produce the desired output. The text visualizations will yield no results if the implementation of the text visualization tool is error-prone. The following considerations will help you create a compelling story with data visualizations.

1.Choose the right type of text visualization

There are many different types of text visualization, each suited to different data types and purposes. An important consideration here is the type of visualization used that suits the data being communicated. For example, if you want to analyze tweets and social media posts over the internet, it will be smart to illustrate the data using word cloud generators or cloud tags.

2. Highlighting key information using color

Color and typography can be used to draw attention to important information within the visualization, such as key data points or trends. You can differentiate between different trends at a glance of an eye.

3. Keep it Simple

Too much information can feel like clutter instead of information; thus, keeping things simple and especially your text visualization, as to the point as possible, is the key here.

4. Use interactive features to allow users to explore the data

Interactive features, such as different sets of filters to sort data, can help users explore more within the text visualization. It also leads to a more compelling story with data visualizations if you can maneuver around the data to meet your specific requirements.

5. Use real-world examples to make the data more relatable

Using real-world examples for a narrative structure for data visualizations leads to a better understanding of the underlying context and meaning of the data represented.

6. Test your visualization with your target audience

Test your text visualization with your target audience to ensure it is clear, engaging, and effectively communicates the insights you want to convey.

Text visualization is a simple yet important tool in our data-rich environment. With so much data available online, data analytics is the need of the hour so that executives can make difficult decisions based on data. Top text visualization platforms offer the best text analytics and brilliant text visualization prowess to help businesses achieve their set goals and targets.

These online platforms achieve this feat by employing the latest NLP methods to extract and analyze data. It then puts the data through its visualization tools, which brilliantly sums the content into graphic one-pager summaries.