Level 6 · Context, conflict, insight, recommendation

A chart shows what. A story says what it means and why it matters. On a dashboard the story lives mostly in the titles: a page whose title states the insight is read in seconds; a page titled with the name of a metric leaves every reader to work it out.

What you are working in

This quiz runs in a practice page, not Power BI (Power BI Desktop runs only on Windows). The charts are drawn from the store data when the site is built. In Power BI Desktop, the title of a visual is in Format visual → General → Title, and a page headline is a Text box (Insert → Text box) or a card fed by a measure, so it can update with the data.

Four parts of a data story

1. Context: why we’re looking. “Sales grew 15.4% in 2025, to $2.30M.”
2. Conflict: what doesn’t fit, the tension. “Yet the website, our biggest channel for years, sold 7% less than in 2024.”
3. Insight: what the data reveals. “The app carried all the growth: up $345k, more than the store’s $307k gain, it passed the website as the biggest channel.”
4. Recommendation: what to do. “Prioritise the app in next year’s product budget, and find out why web is shrinking.”

The insight is the hinge. Without it, the recommendation is an opinion; with it, it’s a conclusion.

Checking the numbers behind it

channel	2024	2025	change	share 2025
App	$650k	$996k	+$345k	43.3%
Web	$1,057k	$980k	−$77k	42.6%
Marketplace	$286k	$324k	+$38k	14.1%
Total	$1,994k	$2,300k	+$307k	100%

An insight has to survive this check. “Customers are moving to the marketplace” fails: its share has been 14% three years running.

Writing titles that carry the story

• Use a full sentence with a verb: “App passed web in 2025”, not “Channel mix”.
• Put a number in it the chart proves.
• Keep the metric name in the axis or subtitle, where it still helps.
• One idea per chart. If the title needs “and” twice, split the chart.

In Power BI, titles that must follow the data (the current month, the leading channel) can come from a measure through the fx button next to the title text.

Common mistakes

• Titles that name the metric. “Sales by channel” makes the reader find the point.
• An insight the chart can’t prove. Readers check, and one unsupported claim discredits the page.
• Leading with the recommendation. It sounds like a pitch before the evidence.
• Too many colours. In Chart A, highlighting the app and greying the rest would make the title obvious at a glance.