I made the data storytelling stack to show how skillspace and goalspace coexist with each other. Skillspace describes a region of things in terms of skills; “I’m an data analyst” inhabits a different region in skillspace than “I’m a marketer”. Goal-space is defined by its intended outputs. “I produce reliable information” is a data analyst goal. “I create long-lasting impressions on customers” is a marketing goal.
There’s normally a unique one-to-one mapping between regions in those two spaces. But the data storytelling stack instead draws a one-to-many relationship between skill regions and goal regions i.e. analysis is used for rearranging reliable information and used for theorizing out into pseudodata. Since there is variance across the different goals, the stack’s design creates clarity in knowing which goals to focus on when discussing a specific region of skills.
What I have discovered recently is that data storytelling is value-variant as well. The skills inhabit different regions in valuespace as well as goalspace.
Valuespace
Values are things like “courage” and “justice”. They’re usually adjectives rather than nouns or verbs. And people can closely identify with values, so variance in valuespace can lead to interpersonal issues. Delineating the different stack layers deescalates disagreements and help reduce false-positive conflicts.
In our case, layers like theorizing and real option creation value volatility. They involve a lot of BS guesswork. The other three layers value stability. We need some kernel of truth to get the ball rolling and we want to pay off all debts by the time we ship the final result.
So valuespace becomes one axis for categorization. Another axis is Thinking (stuff to do w/ information) vs Doing (stuff to do w/ building shipping). Thus, this 2x2 maps out the skillspace and valuespace regions for data storytelling.
The clockwise arrow isn’t a coincidence either. The 2x2 resembles Joseph Campbell’s Hero’ Journey model of storytelling. We want something, so we venture out into the unknown to get it. But we encounter conflict and change because of that before returning home.