The visualizations shown in today’s screencast were done with Many Eyes, which is another very cool piece of software. But what I realized while making them is that narrated animation is really the secret sauce. Analytical software, whether it’s Excel or GapMinder or Many Eyes or something else, is necessary but not sufficient. The stories that people will understand, and remember, are the ones that have been performed well. Now I’m no Hans Rosling, and you certainly won’t see me swallow a sword at the end of this screencast — as he amazingly does at the end of this video. But I will be trying to emulate his example when I tell stories with data. And I’m struck, once again, by the way in which screencasting can bring software interaction to life.

from data to understanding, perhaps?

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