Storytelling and Science

 As a marketing company, we knew Storytelling is important. Good piece, intro below.    See also 'How to Tell a Story' which I am currently reading, by Meg Bowles et al.   Publication of' 'The Moth ' a storytelling consortium.  Worth a close look, and thinking about how it can be linked to science and tech applications. 

Storytelling and Science  By Titus Barik, Sumit Gulwani, Mario Juarez

Communications of the ACM, October 2022, Vol. 65 No. 10, Pages 27-30  10.1145/3526100

In the spirit of this Viewpoint, we begin with a story. One of the authors—Sumit Gulwani—struggled to teach his preschool-aged son—Sumay—a simple conceptual math theorem: Odd plus odd equals even. When diagrams and toys did not work, Sumit realized he had to meet Sumay where he was and not push to a level he was not ready for.a So, he told a story. An odd number, he began, is like a group of kids who are all paired up, except one. That person is "the lonely kid." And he is happy when they meet another odd number because he gets a friend: the other lonely kid. Now, there are no lonely kids, and that makes them an even number. The look on Sumay's face told Sumit that the concept had landed immediately. "What is odd plus even?" Sumit asked. In a sad voice, Sumay answered, "Odd, because there is no one to pair up with the lonely kid." "What is even plus even?" Sumay asked. "Even, because there is no lonely kid to begin with!" Sumit realized his son would best comprehend the abstract theorem when it was couched in a relatable narrative—in this case, one that resonated with a young child's preoccupation with socialization, friendship, and inclusion. As well, this experience happily turned out to be the seed for Sumay's love for mathematics and computing.

Sumit's experience with Sumay shows how even young children use stories to understand, interpret, and construct meaning about the world around them—and earlier evidence suggests stories are in fact fundamental to human cognitive processing.10 Sadly, as professionals we overwhelmingly dismiss the importance of storytelling in our day-to-day work, relegating our professional discomfort of "telling stories" to something that is only for children.

Our organization, the Microsoft Developer Division (DevDiv), has undertaken a bold initiative to make storytelling a "professional competency" and incorporate the science of storytelling intentionally into our culture and operations.4 By doing so, we have amplified our impact across the organization through increasing empathy with our customers, generating clarity with our partners, and building diverse teams.7 Our transformative experiences within this emerging storytelling culture have inspired us to share these stories with you, stories that have deeply connected us—not just as professional researchers and engineers—but at a human level.

The Science Behind Storytelling

During the past decade, the conventional view of storytelling in technical and professional circles has evolved from a "soft skill" to a must-have competency, as the need to influence people has become more important in a world of information overload and remote connections. In organizations, research has found storytelling can act as a springboard to ignite unified action.3 High-tech corporations have used stories as a medium for sharing culture, to "identify heroes and villains, attitudes and values, beliefs, and practices of the organization."6 And in software engineering, crafting stories together with stakeholders builds a common vision of a system—"a good story is much more powerful than any UML diagram can ever be."  .... 

Better Storytelling

Thoughts on better storytelling

3 Ideas for Better Storytelling in Knowledge Management   By Mercy Harper  in the APQC Blog

In her role, Mercy works with APQC’s Principal Research Leads to create whitepapers, case studies, and reports. She focuses developing targeted content for a global business audience. ... 

Storytelling is the number-one way to get people to participate in knowledge management (KM). Most of the time, you can’t force people to “do KM”—and even when you can use requirements and performance goals to make KM a must-do, that’s usually not enough. KM teams need to find and promote stories that show how KM works and why it matters.

All of us share stories every day, so integrating storytelling into a KM program should be easy, right? Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. A lot of KM teams struggle to pull stories out of the business and share them back in compelling ways. To learn how KM can find and tell better stories, I reached out to two of the best storytellers I know: Miriam Brosseau, principal at Tiny Windows Consulting, and Dr. Carla O’Dell, APQC Board Chairman. They shared so many amazing insights, but these three ideas really struck me.

Three ideas for better KM storytelling:

Use appreciative inquiry to find stories

Build storytelling into process

Steal ideas from internet culture to share shorter, more powerful stories  .... "  

Data Storytelling

'Data Storytelling', never heard it described that way, but when building process maps, we often described it in the form of a flow, or journey, or 'story'  to make it clear how changes occured.  So I like the idea of telling it as a story to make it easy to understand. 

Exploring 'Data Storytelling'  in CACM

By Joe Dysart    Commissioned by CACM Staff

Firms specializing artificial intelligence (AI) that generates written text are developing tools that will allow you to have sophisticated conversations with common business databases like Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Microstrategy, Qlik, Spotfire, SAP, and Tableau. Instead of typing at your computer to gain insights, you'll be able voice-chat with your computer about sales forecasts, investment options, and five-year plans.

"It is totally possible," says Robert Weissgraeber, chief technology officer at AX Semantics, a firm specializing in natural language generation (NLG). Weissgraeber says getting to the point where you can easily converse with your database is mainly a problem of collecting and unifying the data into a source that can be connected to the right tools.

"The big thing that has changed in the past two years is that, thanks to commoditization of natural language generation tools, a conversational business database is not a special project with a million-dollar price tag anymore. It can be set up for a far lower price point, allowing even smaller businesses to implement and benefit from it."

Many consumers have used basic conversational databases without even realizing it. When you ask Alexa or asks a question like "What happened today in history?" or "How does the intercom work?" or "How many ounces are in a pound?" you're using a conversational database.

Natural language generation firms like AX Semantics and Arria NLG to take this technology and apply it to a business database, so businesses can verbally ask questions of their databases, like:

"How do our sales for Q4 this year compare with Q4 sales for last year?"

"What are the five top-selling products in our product line this year?"

"Who are the top three salespeople in our corporation in each of our eight regions?"

Software from NLG companies can respond to such questions by relying on pre-programmed code templates that are activated by the questions, which instruct it how to obtain the information in a company's database, then report its findings verbally.

The level of detail such software is able to produce is limited by the number of questions companies want answered. Some companies may be satisfied if the software can produce verbal answers to 10 crucial questions, while others may want their managers' top 100 questions answered.

Digitizing StoryCorps Audio Interviews

 Also similar to work we did in the enterprise to understand consumer interviews.  We spent some time looking for solutions of this type, but they were not available.  Today it would seem that adaptations of the below would work.

AI to digitize StoryCorps’ massive archive of audio interviews   By  Mike Wheatley in SiliconAngle

Google LLC today shared how it has worked with the nonprofit organization StoryCorps Inc.      to digitize an enormous archive of human story audio recordings using some of its most advanced artificial intelligence technologies. 

StoryCorps’ mission is to record, preserve and share the stories of Americans from all backgrounds and beliefs. The project was founded back in 2003, and since then it has recorded one-on-one interviews with more than 600,000 people. Those recordings are stored at the American Folklife Center in the U.S. Library of Congress, where they are being preserved for future generations.

The StoryCorps archives are believed to be the largest collection of human voices on the planet, but up until recently those stories have been inaccessible to most people. To change that, StoryCorps approached Google to ask if it could help make its rich archive of history universally accessible to anyone who’s interested in listening to them.   ... 

.... StoryCorps’ entire archives can now be accessed from its online platform  and its mobile application.   ... 

StoryFit Analyzes Stories for Understanding

Again links to work we did for large advertisers using language analysis for marketing goals. 

Brought to my attention in a recent podcast on Artificial Intelligence by Bradley Netrock/.   interview with Monica Lander:

AI Company Storyfit studies films and books to understand them 

State of the Art Story Research, For Storytellers and Story Sellers

White Paper: https://www.storyfit.com/how-character-interactions-impact-drama-success?hsLang=en

Webinar https://www.storyfit.com/characterresearchregistrationpage?hsLang=en

StoryFit generates detailed data profiles of your properties so you can quickly find comps, discover story themes that appeal to niche audiences, search and re-market your back catalog, and make smarter decisions from development to marketing and merchandising. .... 

Run your project through our natural-language-processing software to generate a detailed profile of important story, character, and production-related metrics. Compare your script’s profile with our catalog containing the last 35+ years of films, find story themes that will resonate with audiences, predict your marketing budget, and more.  .... " 

Supply Chain Priorities with COVID

A look at consumer brands and priorities in the pandemic.

Supply Chain Storytelling: Freeman Previews CBA's New Priorities Moving Through COVID
By Lisa Johnston - 05/19/2020  in Consumergoods

Geoff Freeman, CEO, Consumer Brands Association
Geoff Freeman, CBA president and CEO

The role of federal manufacturing regulations for consumer goods companies received a fresh look this spring when multiple meat processing plants were forced to shut down because of the spread of COVID-19.

In a call with CGT, Consumer Brands Association (CBA) president and CEO Geoff Freeman shared insight into the work the CBA is undertaking to implement such uniform standards, and previewed a set of new priorities the association is preparing to move forward through the health crisis.

An association founded upon a principle of driving uniform standards, the CBA has been working with a broad coalition of consumer goods stakeholders during the pandemic, as well as frequently engaging with the White House Coronavirus Task Force, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Food and Drug Administration. ... '

“I'm pleased to say that in recent discussions there has been more and more acknowledgment from government leaders on the value of clear and specific guidance,” Freeman said. “I think at the outset of this — and let’s face it, this was a new challenge for just about everybody — there was a fear that if we give clear and specific guidance, we're somehow violating states’ rights, and states’ rights is an obvious principle that our country was founded upon.” ... '

The COVID-19 Virus and What the Recommendations Mean

Very nicely done,  just eight minutes plus animated video about the topic.  For the whole family to understand.   By the German Kurzgesagt animation studio.



Kurzgesagt Animation Studio  (with other language translations)

And via the Center For Disease Conrol:  https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html

Assistant Telling Stories in the Classroom

Other examples of this out there?  I would rather have kids reading for themselves.   The basics still mean something.

Alexa in the classroom? Amazon’s voice assistant leads kids’ story time   By  Matt Day

The group of kids, aged 7 to 12, sat around a table, trying to follow along with the reading assignment. It was after lunch. Energy was high, attention spans short.

Nobody held books, though. And a teacher wasn’t reading.

Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa was conducting story time, queuing up professional narrators to read the story aloud, quizzing the kids in its robot voice and offering hints when someone flubbed an answer to questions about “Davy Duck’s Grumpy Day.”

Voice software has colonized smartphones, car dashboards and the living room. If the technology follows the trail blazed by tablet and cloud computing, the next frontier may be the classroom. ... "

AI Storytelling Companies

Not quite all the same thing, but interesting spins on the idea.  Like the idea of a story, like a contract, that could adapt readily to an audience and context.

AI Storytelling Companies Usher in New Era of Characters, Relationships
November 28, 2019319  in AITrends

AI storytelling tools are combining content creation, emotional intelligence, sentiment analysis, and video synthesis in a new category of emerging technology.    By John P. Desmond, AI Trends Editor  in AITrends

A new wave of AI Storytelling tools is ushering in an era that includes created characters who have relationships, are in stories, and can adapt to react to how audiences play.  ..... "

On the State of AI Writing

Good considerable piece on efforts underway to allow AI's to write.   Its being done, but still not so well.   Should writers worry?  They can now relate based on data, but can they tell a good story?  Will automating writing decrease the voices we hear?   To those that have the better AI for their narrative?

A Story Told by a Machine
The Circuitous Path to AI Writing    By Dirk Knemeyer and Jonathan Follett

You may not be aware of it, but AI is already writing stories that you’ve probably read. For years, stock blurbs have been written by machines. More recently, minor league sports game summaries have been as well. Are feature-length stories and novels next? At the University of California Santa Cruz, AI researcher Snigdha Chaturvedi and her team are devising the Natural Language Processing building blocks that will someday enable machines to tell long form narrative stories. While at present the technology is impressive, it remains a long way away from that goal. Through their research we can begin to better understand how natural language generation technology will become part of our lives.  .... " 

Jungle Jims, Foodie Adventures

Am a long-time shopper at Jungle Jims.  Every week.   Also led many tours there for our innovation groups from all over the world.  Saw this article and had to quote it.   Lots of pictures at the link.  Many expert opinions.    Want my further thoughts, let me know.   Many past posts in its embedded concepts.   If you come here,  just outside of Cincinnati, let me know and I may join the tour.   Also more expert opinion below:

Jungle Jim’s delivers a foodie adventure  by Denise Leathers in Retailwire
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of a current article from Frozen & Refrigerated Buyer magazine.

Part traditional supermarket, part theme park and part United Nations, a visit to Cincinnati-based Jungle Jim’s International Market is truly an event.

From the life-size giraffe lounging by the pool in the parking lot and the singing animatronics inside to the S.S. Minnow replica and 800-pound tube of provolone hanging in an endcap, there’s a lot to see. Scads of festivals, tastings and cooking classes further make Jungle Jim’s a popular destination for out-of-town visitors.

And did we mention the working monorail that ferries visitors to and from the nearby Oscar Event Center?

When Jungle Jim Bonaminio founded the business in 1971, the concept of “retailtainment” hadn’t yet been conceived, but his ahead-of-its-time solution was to make shopping fun. In fact, that’s one of the reasons Jungle Jim’s still doesn’t offer online ordering. “Our stores are an adventure,” says senior buyer and category manager Chris Vollat. “They’re meant to be shopped, not picked like a warehouse.”  .... " 

Data Visualization in Quadrants with a Story

Clever piece in KDNuggets, about how to take survey data and take some basic, well known frameworks, and add a story to make your point.  Non-technical.   Not sure how wow-viral the point is, but this gives an example of how to proceed to make simple data description useful for anyone.  Nice thoughtful piece.

The 4 Quadrants of Data Science Skills and 7 Principles for Creating a Viral Data Visualization

As a data scientist, your most important skill is creating meaningful visualizations to disseminate knowledge and impact your organization or client. These seven principals will guide you toward developing charts with clarity, as exemplified with data from a recent KDnuggets poll. 

By Jose Berengueres, Professor & Angel Investor.

I teach CS and Design Thinking. But today, I am on a mission to show how to do great charts because I dislike confusing charts. You may think of me as the Marie Kondo of charts or the Cole Knaflic of Dubai, and you might not be entirely wrong. In this post, I will share 7 principles* to go from Aha-charts to Wow-charts. Let’s get our hands dirty with a dataset from a recent KDnuggets poll.

The poll had just two questions:

Which skills/knowledge areas do you currently have? and
Which skills do you want to add or improve?
KDnuggets received 1,500 answers, and we will use the aggregates by skill [1].  ...  "   

Retail as Theater

Being close to Jungle Jims near Cincinnati, and have taken many international tour groups there,  so its a long time interest.  Hard to pull off, but always makes me smile and delight, and that gets me back there many more times than I would have.  This is somewhat different, and I imagine harder yet to deliver on.   But well worth the idea.  I also see that Jungle Jims food blog has been discontinued, too bad,  but had noted it was not updated enough.   ... Oh, pardon me, nix that ... their blog has been updated by another, which is here.

New concept turns retail store into a theatrical experience  by Matthew Stern

NYC retailer Showfields, a brick-and-mortar showcase for mostly online brands, is getting in on the experiential act with a theatrical guided tour called House of Showfields. 

To begin of the 20-minute immersive tour in the Showfields store, actors show customers the way through a hidden door on the third floor behind a bookcase (from a Showfields-hosted brand), according to a media release. The door leads to a spiral slide down to the building’s second floor, where actors then guide guests through rooms where they interact with products from brands that Showfields sells. 

In an interview with RetailWire, Showfields CEO and co-founder Tal Zvi Nathanel expanded on what visitors (who must RSVP for the experience) should expect. 

“You’re going through this very detailed and high-touch type of scene that you walk into,” Mr. Nathanel said. “From the door to the elevator to secret back doors … Everything is really fun and at each part of it you will meet a different actor who plays a different character and walks you through a specific kind of moment, which together have one cohesive narrative. The goal is to arouse your senses, give you a memorable moment, an emotional connection, allow you to connect with other people which are with you in that space right now … to give you a way to experience product in a fun way.” 

Mr. Nathanel would not elaborate on how the experience’s narrative arc will maintain an element of surprise, but said that the actors will portray an array of intriguing characters, such as scientists, artists, creators and explorers.  .... " 

AI Storytelling EBook

Data Robot provides an eBook on AI Storytelling.  Such an approach is useful not only to the clients, but even to the creators of any AI or analytics projects.   To make sure the results make sense to all.    As the article makes the case, its also about trust.   Will be reading.

Introduction to AI Storytelling Build Trust Throughout the AI Project
In today’s era of AI and machine-assisted analytics, accurately interpreting and effectively communicating findings is becoming a crucial skill to bridge the growing data literacy gap. To get the most value from AI projects to drive better outcomes, you need to help decision stakeholders understand the process and make sense of results.

Machine learning use cases, metrics, and charts can be difficult to comprehend and explain. Describing the AI problem to solve, machine learning models, and the relationships among variables are often subtle, surprising and complex. Successful analytical communicators don’t wait until the end of an AI project. Instead, they use the entire process to educate stakeholders.

This eBook will introduce you to the art of AI storytelling.

"DataRobot's platform makes my work exciting, my job fun, and the results more accurate and timely -- it's almost like magic!"
Omair Tariq    Data Analyst, Symphony Post Acute Network ..... " 

Participant, Customer Storytellling

How much of this can we hand off to the customer, and how well does that work?   Can customers plot their own journey?

Black Mirror: Bandersnatch Is an Experiment on Us
Independent (London)    By David Streitfeld

The Netflix series "Black Mirror" recently released an interactive episode in which viewers can choose the course of the program's narrative. Participants start by choosing relatively innocuous actions for the episode's protagonist to follow, which become increasingly consequential as the show plays out. An enthusiastic response to the program could encourage Netflix to produce more interactive content for public consumption, potentially transforming storytelling. The company already has developed software to help organize stories that have endless permutations, has the technical ability to present these tales on multiple platforms around the world simultaneously, and is calling for producers to submit interactive proposals in different genres. Behind the idea of interactive content is the notion that viewers will care more if they have a say in the plot.   ... " 

Voices of AI

Nice AI podcast series I just discovered.    I would call these more technical, yet still very interesting. Note the aspect of storytelling that is included.  Conversation of any kind is a form of storytelling.  People are good at it, machines are just learning.   It may well be the nut to crack to make things be more intelligent.  Now Following. Will post links to from time to time.   He has a similar effort on VR also pointed to at the link.

http://voicesofai.com/    By Kent Bye   

The Voices of AI Podcast with Kent Bye publishes 2-3 episodes a week featuring interviews with artificial intelligence researchers, application developers, game developers, and storytellers who are driving innovation in intelligent computing.

It’s hosted by Kent Bye, who also produces the Voices of VR podcast. It was through the lens of immersive experiences and experiential design that Kent first got interested in how AI was going to revolutionize interactive storytelling. He’s traveled to academic, business, and creative AI conferences to talk directly with top experts in the field.

The algorithmic reality of AI will continue to be a part of nearly every aspect of our daily lives, and this podcast aims to educate experiential designers for being able to understand and start using AI as a medium for expression, solving complex problems, and helping the world become a better place. ... "  ... 

Analytics Translators Needed

Good piece below in DSC by William Vorhies, the role is well described.  I did this for many years.  Since translation suggests there are at least two 'languages' involved, it means you have to know both the math and analytics, and the business process. The additional languages needed might include things like domain knowledge, accounting, databases, human factors. 

So back then it was assumed that the practitioner had all the languages and experience they needed.    And the ability to express themselves, say by telling a understandable story.  Being able to explain the results.  But now with not enough experienced people available, that may not often be the case.    Many groups don't even know if they have the necessary capabilities.  A dangerous situation. 

Analytics Translator – The Most Important New Role in Analytics

Summary:  The role of Analytics Translator was recently identified by McKinsey as the most important new role in analytics, and a key factor in the failure of analytic programs when the role is absent.

The role of Analytics Translator was recently identified by McKinsey as the most important new role in analytics, and a key factor in the failure of analytic programs when the role is absent.

As our profession of data science has evolved, any number of authors including myself has offered different taxonomies to describe the differences among the different ‘tribes’ of data scientists.  We may disagree on the categories but we agree that we’re not all alike.

Ten years ago, around the time that Hadoop and Big Data went open source there was still a perception that data scientists should be capable of performing every task in the analytics lifecycle. 

The obvious skills were model creation and deployment, and data blending and munging.  Other important skills in this bucket would have included setting up data infrastructure (data lakes, streaming architectures, Big Data NoSQL DBs, etc.).  And finally the skills that were just assumed to come with seniority, storytelling (explaining it to executive sponsors), and great project management skills.

Frankly, when I entered the profession, this was true and for the most part, in those early projects, I did indeed do it all.  .... "

Machines as Better Narrators?

 Perhaps then with humans editing.  Examples I have seen so far would need lots of that.

Storytelling with data: Will machines become better narrators than us?  in 7Wdata

The use of digital technology for storytelling is not limited to the medium itself. The creation of stories is also changing visibly through the use of artificial intelligence and big data. Netflix demonstrates, what data-driven narration can look like. Will (script-) authors soon become obsolete? ... . " 

Macy's and Storytelling

Had previously mentioned how Jungle Jims did this.   Also saw at the recent UC Business Summit saw presentations about their approaches.  More to follow on that.

Macy’s latest acquisition is all about STORYtelling   by George Anderson in Retailwire

Macy’s, Inc. announced that it has acquired STORY, an experiential concept store in New York. STORY’s founder and CEO, Rachel Shechtman, will join Macy’s as the company’s brand experience officer focused on the retailer’s in-store experience.

STORY completely changes its store layout and merchandise every four to eight weeks, focusing on a new theme with each changeover. The concept, which was founded in 2011 by Ms. Shechtman, a former brand consultant for Kraft and TOMS shoes, emphasizes brand collaboration as it builds unique retail experiences for consumers. .... " 

“It’s exciting to have a national stage to leverage STORY’s learnings and relationships to create impact at scale,” said Ms. Shechtman. “I’m energized by the opportunity to further build new customer experiences across the Macy’s portfolio, while also continuing to pursue new business models and brand partnerships.” ...  '

Replacing Powerpoint with Narratives

Stories are good, when constructed well.   What if you just want the essential and concise points to carry away.  Narrative also has the stronger possibility of Confirmation Bias.  Its a good story, so its real, true?  And the more you construct it with glossy or animated colorful visuals, the more its correct?  Not saying we to not tell a storywell, but bullet points are useful too.  Brilliant?  No, incomplete.

Jeff Bezos Banned PowerPoint in Meetings.  .....
Narrative memos have replaced PowerPoint presentations at Amazon. Here are three reasons why.
By Carmine Gallo ...