  Prior research on communicating with visualization has focused on public
presentation and asynchronous individual consumption, such as in the domain of
journalism. The visualization research community knows comparatively little
about synchronous and multimodal communication around data within
organizations, from team meetings to executive briefings. We conducted two
qualitative interview studies with individuals who prepare and deliver
presentations about data to audiences in organizations. In contrast to prior
work, we did not limit our interviews to those who self-identify as data
analysts or data scientists. Both studies examined aspects of speaking about
data with visual aids such as charts, dashboards, and tables. One study was a
retrospective examination of current practices and difficulties, from which we
identified three scenarios involving presentations of data. We describe these
scenarios using an analogy to musical performance: small collaborative team
meetings are akin to jam session, while more structured presentations can range
from semi-improvisational performances among peers to formal recitals given to
executives or customers. In our second study, we grounded the discussion around
three design probes, each examining a different aspect of presenting data: the
progressive reveal of visualization to direct attention and advance a
narrative, visualization presentation controls that are hidden from the
audience's view, and the coordination of a presenter's video with interactive
visualization. Our distillation of interviewees' responses surfaced twelve
themes, from ways of authoring presentations to creating accessible and
engaging audience experiences.
