Designing for Your Audience
Tailor your data story to your audience's expertise, role, and decision-making needs.
The same data should be told differently to a CEO, a data scientist, and a frontline manager. Audience-first design is one of the most important — and most neglected — skills in data storytelling.
Know your audience's questions
Before you build your story, ask: what decision does my audience need to make? What do they already know? What do they care about?
Different roles have different default questions:
Depth and breadth
Executives generally want less depth and more breadth — the big picture. Analysts want more depth — the methodology and confidence intervals.
A common mistake is giving executives analyst-level detail. They don't need it, and it buries your insight.
Pre-attentive attributes
Use color, size, and position to guide your audience's attention to the most important information before they consciously start reading. If everything is the same color and size, nothing stands out.