More on balancing narrative and data
Nancy White recently made the observation:
I keep thinking about the role of stories. When we say “tell a story” it has a certain tone that doesn’t always have credibility in some domains like science. Yet it brings context to content that otherwise is easy to gloss over and dismiss.
This sure is true and like Shawn mentioned in his previous post on balancing narrative and data:
Narrative on its own is entertaining, informative, makes it real and even inspiring but it’s rarely effective on its own to persuade the hard-nosed number-crunchers which dwell in every organisation. Conversely, data is dry, clinical and reasonable but rarely hits you in the guts with excitement to take action.
I like how Nancy’s post points to a nice piece of work incorporating both, hard science and narrative: A pediatric digital storytelling system for third year medical students: The Virtual Pediatric Patients.
This reinforces to me, how to be convincing you need: Data, Reasoning AND Story.
Read more on what we have to say about narrative here.
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