A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven Stories
Data-driven stories (DDS) are digital forms of storytelling that arrange data and visualizations to communicate a narrative of information to an audience. They have been growing rapidly over the past decades. As a result, a great degree of versatility appears in the forms of published DDS. The recen...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2024-02-01
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| Series: | Applied Sciences |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/14/4/1387 |
| _version_ | 1797299050911891456 |
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| author | Morteza Asgari Thomas Hurtut |
| author_facet | Morteza Asgari Thomas Hurtut |
| author_sort | Morteza Asgari |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Data-driven stories (DDS) are digital forms of storytelling that arrange data and visualizations to communicate a narrative of information to an audience. They have been growing rapidly over the past decades. As a result, a great degree of versatility appears in the forms of published DDS. The recent structures of DDS are more complex, respecting their arrangement, composition, features, and inner parts. In the current academic research, neither storytelling techniques nor any taxonomies suggest visual mechanisms to distinguish between different layouts, compositions, and arrangements. The lack of an expressive visual solution that integrates different parts of DDS under one structure prevents the authors from trying more alternative design paths in the story design process. In this proposed work, we unify all the constructing parts of DDS to define the narrative structure as a visually structured representation of the DDS narrative, which is formed and designed by their constructing elements. This solution proposes a design language consisting of a set of design rules that integrate the visual elements to represent the DDS narrative structure. Our evaluation of the audit process out of 100 DDS examples confirms that the design language is comprehensive, expressive, and versatile. Additionally, we developed DataStoryDesign, a system that incorporates this visual solution to facilitate prototyping and storyboarding DDS for a team of DDS authors. The preliminary result of the exploratory evaluation indicates that such a solution is effective in prototyping and storyboarding DDS. In addition, our findings confirmed that the existence of our design language improves the visual communication between different personas in the DDS production workflow. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T22:44:55Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-c57bf3ec76a2410cbe9b2caa5195b29b |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2076-3417 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T22:44:55Z |
| publishDate | 2024-02-01 |
| publisher | MDPI AG |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Applied Sciences |
| spelling | doaj.art-c57bf3ec76a2410cbe9b2caa5195b29b2024-02-23T15:05:50ZengMDPI AGApplied Sciences2076-34172024-02-01144138710.3390/app14041387A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven StoriesMorteza Asgari0Thomas Hurtut1Computer and Software Engineering Department, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, QC H3T 1J4, CanadaComputer and Software Engineering Department, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, QC H3T 1J4, CanadaData-driven stories (DDS) are digital forms of storytelling that arrange data and visualizations to communicate a narrative of information to an audience. They have been growing rapidly over the past decades. As a result, a great degree of versatility appears in the forms of published DDS. The recent structures of DDS are more complex, respecting their arrangement, composition, features, and inner parts. In the current academic research, neither storytelling techniques nor any taxonomies suggest visual mechanisms to distinguish between different layouts, compositions, and arrangements. The lack of an expressive visual solution that integrates different parts of DDS under one structure prevents the authors from trying more alternative design paths in the story design process. In this proposed work, we unify all the constructing parts of DDS to define the narrative structure as a visually structured representation of the DDS narrative, which is formed and designed by their constructing elements. This solution proposes a design language consisting of a set of design rules that integrate the visual elements to represent the DDS narrative structure. Our evaluation of the audit process out of 100 DDS examples confirms that the design language is comprehensive, expressive, and versatile. Additionally, we developed DataStoryDesign, a system that incorporates this visual solution to facilitate prototyping and storyboarding DDS for a team of DDS authors. The preliminary result of the exploratory evaluation indicates that such a solution is effective in prototyping and storyboarding DDS. In addition, our findings confirmed that the existence of our design language improves the visual communication between different personas in the DDS production workflow.https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/14/4/1387information visualizationdata visualizationdesignstorytelling |
| spellingShingle | Morteza Asgari Thomas Hurtut A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven Stories Applied Sciences information visualization data visualization design storytelling |
| title | A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven Stories |
| title_full | A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven Stories |
| title_fullStr | A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven Stories |
| title_full_unstemmed | A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven Stories |
| title_short | A Design Language for Prototyping and Storyboarding Data-Driven Stories |
| title_sort | design language for prototyping and storyboarding data driven stories |
| topic | information visualization data visualization design storytelling |
| url | https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3417/14/4/1387 |
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