Data Storytelling
Training Course 

London UK & Live Online

JBI Training offers the Data Storytelling and Dashboard Design course — a two-day instructor-led programme covering the full spectrum of communicating data effectively, from visual design principles and chart selection through to building interactive dashboards and presenting insights to business audiences. The course is available as a scheduled classroom session in London, as a live online instructor-led programme, or as a customised onsite delivery for corporate teams. It is suitable for anyone who works with data and needs to present findings clearly and persuasively to both technical and non-technical stakeholders.

Data storytelling is the practice of combining data, visualisation, and narrative to communicate insights in a way that is clear, meaningful, and actionable for a specific audience. It goes beyond producing charts and tables — it involves structuring a logical flow of evidence, choosing the right visual form for each insight, removing distracting elements, and framing findings in the context of a business question or decision. It is a valuable professional skill because most data professionals are highly capable at analysing data but less confident at communicating what it means to decision-makers. Organisations that communicate data well make faster, better-informed decisions — and professionals who can bridge the gap between analysis and action are consistently in high demand.

Data visualisation is the practice of representing data graphically — selecting chart types, designing visual layouts, and encoding data into visual elements such as colour, size, and position. Data storytelling is a broader discipline that uses visualisation as one of its core tools, but also encompasses narrative structure, audience awareness, and the logical sequencing of insights to guide a viewer toward a conclusion or decision. A well-designed chart is a component of data storytelling; data storytelling is the act of using charts, narrative, and context together to make a compelling and trustworthy case from evidence.

The course is suitable for a wide range of professionals. Data analysts and business intelligence professionals who produce reports and dashboards but want to make them more impactful will find the course directly applicable. Managers and business users who present data to leadership or stakeholders will benefit from the communication and narrative techniques covered. Data scientists who need to present findings from complex analyses to non-technical audiences will gain practical frameworks for translating technical work into business language. The course is tool-agnostic and the principles covered apply across Power BI, Tableau, Excel, Python visualisation libraries, and other BI and reporting tools.

The course covers the core principles of effective dashboard design, including how to define the purpose and audience of a dashboard before designing it, how to structure information hierarchically so that the most important insights are immediately visible, how to choose the right chart type for each data relationship, how to use colour purposefully rather than decoratively, how to reduce visual clutter and remove elements that do not contribute to understanding, and how to design for different viewing contexts including screen presentations, printed reports, and interactive self-service tools. These principles are grounded in established research on human perception and cognitive load.

Choosing the right chart type depends on the relationship you are trying to communicate. Comparisons between categories are best shown with bar or column charts. Trends over time are most clearly communicated with line charts. Part-to-whole relationships are suited to stacked bars or treemaps rather than pie charts in most cases. Correlations between two variables are shown with scatter plots. Distributions are communicated with histograms or box plots. The course covers a practical framework for matching data relationships to visual forms, common mistakes such as overusing pie charts or 3D effects, and how to evaluate whether a chosen visual is genuinely helping the audience understand the data or adding unnecessary complexity.

A report is a detailed, structured document that presents data and analysis across multiple pages or sections, typically intended to be read sequentially and to provide comprehensive coverage of a topic. A dashboard is a single-page or single-screen visual summary that provides an at-a-glance view of key metrics and performance indicators, designed to be scanned rather than read in detail. Dashboards are most effective when they are focused on a specific audience and decision context, contain only the metrics that matter most to that audience, and are updated regularly to reflect current data. The course covers the design considerations specific to each format and the common mistakes that occur when reports are mistakenly designed as dashboards, or vice versa.

AI tools are increasingly capable of generating charts, summaries, and draft narratives from data automatically — including features such as Microsoft Copilot in Power BI, which can generate narrative explanations of visuals. However, AI-generated outputs require human judgement to evaluate whether the narrative is accurate, whether the visualisation chosen is appropriate for the audience, and whether the story being told is the right one to tell given the business context. Data storytelling skills are more relevant in an AI-assisted environment, not less — because professionals need to critically evaluate and refine AI outputs rather than accept them uncritically. The course equips delegates with the design and communication judgement needed to work effectively alongside AI analytics tools.

Yes. The Data Storytelling and Dashboard Design course can be delivered as a customised closed-group programme for corporate teams, onsite at your organisation's premises or online. Content and exercises can be tailored to the data tools and reporting formats the team already uses — for example, teams using Power BI, Tableau, or Excel can work with examples from those environments. The course can also be adapted to focus on specific communication challenges the team faces, such as presenting to executive audiences, designing operational dashboards, or improving the quality of recurring reports. JBI has delivered data and analytics training for corporate clients including the BBC, NHS, RBS, Sky, EDF, and Capita.

Yes. The course content is continuously reviewed and updated to reflect current best practices in data communication, visualisation design, and dashboard development. This includes the latest thinking from the data visualisation and information design community, evolving guidance on accessibility in data visualisation, and the growing role of AI-assisted analytics tools in generating and augmenting data narratives. Delegates leave with skills and frameworks that reflect how data communication is approached in professional analytics and business intelligence environments today.