Big data real-time storytelling with self-service visualization

Abstract

Stories help to communicate information and interpret knowledge. Once the data is collected, analyzed, cleansed, and transformed, the subsequent step is to extract potential value from it. Realization of value will happen, only when business-centric insights are discovered and translated to time-bound actionable outcome. To maximize the potential value, data should be decoded into a storytelling medium via visualization, which can be either static or dynamic. Big data visualization is to reveal stories from data tsunami, generated at an alarming speed with diversified formats. The stories tend to represent vital characteristics to enlarge users. Self-service visualization empowers users to uncover unique patterns, interesting facts, and relationships from the underlying data by building their own stories without the in-depth technical knowledge, possibly little handhold by IT department. In this survey paper, we first get familiar with big data storytelling with visualization and its related concepts, and then will look through general approaches to do the visualization. To get deeper about it, we will have discussion about truthful data visualization in self-service mode representing real view of the business. This paper also presents the challenges and available technological solution, covering open source for representing real-time view of the story.