What are the steps in designing an effective data visualization? Is there a methodology for that? What are the qualities of an effective data visualization? The book Storytelling with Data by Cole Nussbaumer Knafflic is organized into a series of big‐picture lessons or concepts, with each chapter focusing on a single core lesson and related concepts. Here are the six key lessons that a student would want to learn in order according to the book.

1. Understand the context
2. Choose an appropriate visual display
3. Eliminate clutter
4. Focus attention where you want it
5. Think like a designer
6. Tell a story

1. Before you begin building a visualizations, ask who your audience is and what you want them to know or do. You will need to understand the context or situation. Who are the stakeholders and what are their objectives? They can give you a purpose for your story. They can identify the key requirements of your story, identify the data or the data source and clarify and refine the business case. They can also give you a timeline as to when the story is to be completed and presented.

2. What is the best way to display your data you want to communicate? What are the most common types of visuals used to communicate data in a business setting? Specific types of visuals covered include simple text, table, heatmap, line graph, slopegraph, vertical bar chart, vertical stacked bar chart, waterfall chart, horizontal bar chart, horizontal stacked bar chart, and square area graph. The book also covers visuals to be avoided, including pie and donut charts, and discuss reasons for avoiding 3D.

3. We need to take a discerning eye to the elements we allow on our page or screen and work to identify those things that are taking up brain power unnecessarily and remove them.

4. This chapter examines how people see and how you can use that to your advantage when crafting visuals. It discusses sight and memory and the importance of pre-attentive attributes like size, color, and position on page. We can use this information to focus a reader attention.

5. We first want to think about what it is we want our audience to be able to do with the data (function) and create a visualization (form) that will allow for this with ease. Form follows function. Traditional design concepts can be applied to communicating with data.

6. The Model Visuals chapter looks at five exemplary visuals and discuss the specific thought process and design choices that led to their creation, utilizing the lessons covered up to this point.

7. Lessons in Storytelling concepts of storytelling that can be leveraged for communicating with data.

8. In this comprehensive chapter, Putting It All Together, it follows the storytelling with data process from start to finish using a single real‐world example.