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Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data
Abstract
Data visualization is regularly promoted for its ability to reveal stories within data, yet these “data stories” differ in important ways from traditional forms of storytelling. Storytellers, especially online journalists, have increasingly been integrating visualizations into their narratives, in some cases allowing the visualization to function in place of a written story. In this paper, we systematically review the design space of this emerging class of visualizations. Drawing on case studies from news media to visualization research, we identify distinct genres of narrative visualization. We characterize these design differences, together with interactivity and messaging, in terms of the balance between the narrative flow intended by the author (imposed by graphical elements and the interface) and story discovery on the part of the reader (often through interactive exploration). Our framework suggests design strategies for narrative visualization, including promising under-explored approaches to journalistic storytelling and educational media.
... However, at the same time, data storytelling has a different purpose, which is to communicate information through visualized data facts [17]. Since Segel and Heer [18] first formulated the genres and design space of data storytelling, researchers have studied practitioners' work, uncovering common characteristics and design patterns, such as interactivity, rhetoric, and cinematography [19]- [21]. With the advent of data stories with spatially immersive visuals, we believe that there are open-ended research questions that neither traditional data visualization nor immersive analytics research has fully investigated yet. ...
... Data-driven storytelling aims to convey the author's messages by meaningfully connecting findings and visualizations derived from the data [17]. While most research in data visualization focuses on visual analytics (i.e., discovering insights and data-driven facts), there is limited aid for using data stories to communicate data-driven insights to others [18]. As pioneers among researchers investigating data stories, Segel and Heer [18] analyzed 58 visualizations from journalism, business, and research fields, and formulated a comprehensive design space that includes three ways for categorizing data stories: (1) genres; (2) visual narrative tactics for directing attention, guiding transitions, and orienting audiences; (3) narrative structure tactics such as ordering, interactivity, and messaging. ...
... While most research in data visualization focuses on visual analytics (i.e., discovering insights and data-driven facts), there is limited aid for using data stories to communicate data-driven insights to others [18]. As pioneers among researchers investigating data stories, Segel and Heer [18] analyzed 58 visualizations from journalism, business, and research fields, and formulated a comprehensive design space that includes three ways for categorizing data stories: (1) genres; (2) visual narrative tactics for directing attention, guiding transitions, and orienting audiences; (3) narrative structure tactics such as ordering, interactivity, and messaging. ...
An increasing number of web articles engage the reader with the feeling of being immersed in the data space. However, the exact characteristics of spatial immersion in the context of visual storytelling remain vague. For example, what are the common design patterns of data stories with spatial immersion? How do they affect the reader's experience? To gain a deeper understanding of the subject, we collected 23 distinct data stories with spatial immersion, and identified six design patterns, such as cinematic camera shots and transitions, intuitive data representations, realism, naturally moving elements, direct manipulation of camera or visualization, and dynamic dimension. Subsequently, we designed four data stories and conducted a crowdsourced user study comparing three design variations (static, animated, and immersive). Our results suggest that data stories with the design patterns for spatial immersion are more interesting and persuasive than static or animated ones, but no single condition was deemed more understandable or trustworthy.
... For example, stories in text are typically presented either in a series of linear sequences or in an inverted pyramid structure, which is strictly organized by the author. In contrast, stories in data visualization can be organized in a linear sequence (author-driven) but can also be presented in a non-linear sequence and interactive, inviting audiences to discover the path of the story (reader-driven) (Rodríguez et al., 2015;Segel & Heer, 2010). ...
... The structure of narrative visualization lies in the spectrum of author-driven and read-driven approaches (Segel & Heer, 2010). The author-driven approach, which is optimum for storytelling and efficient communication, follows a strictly linear structure through visualization and messaging and allows no interactivity. ...
... In the hybrid structure, the main story is provided by the author, but audiences also have the freedom to explore the data in a certain part of the story . Segel and Heer (2010) identified three typical hybrid combinations, each of which has different permutations and emphasis and works for different types of stories. ...
Storytelling is a powerful tool for journalists to represent reality and communicate it to the public. With the emergence of digital technology, journalists have begun to take advantage of new media formats, including audio, video, data visualization, graphic animations, virtual/augmented reality, computer algorithms, and games, in their storytelling. Of all emerging digital journalism storytelling, storytelling with data visualization has gained prominence in newsrooms and popularity among audiences. Data visualization has become an integral part of the final presentation of a data-driven story. Although there have been numerous studies on data journalism practices, interactive features, visual data elements, and archiving solutions, there has been relatively little research conducted on strategies and techniques to incorporate data visualization into journalism storytelling. Based on previous literature on narrative visualization and visualization techniques, this chapter seeks to fill this gap, providing journalists with a better understanding of how to use data visual presentations in their storytelling and ultimately create more powerful communicative tools.
... Narratives, as defined by the authors, are a series of events and facts given in a certain order. In the seminal study, Segel and Heer 21 outlined the design space for narrative visualizations based on their investigation of 58 data visualizations taken from social media, scientific publications, and other sources. ...
... Segel and Heer 21 proposed a design space for narrative visualization, which includes three dimensions: genres, narrative visual tactics, and narrative structure tactics. ...
... The genres defines how the information is organized in the visualization. The authors identified seven genres: magazine style, annotated chart, partitioned poster, flowchart, comic strip, slide-show, and film/video/animation. Figure 2 illustrates the narrative genres based on their study 21 . ...
There is a growing interest in presenting data clearly to users. One of the ways to increase engagement and understanding of this data is through narrative visualizations, as they utilize elements that can enhance understanding of the presented data in different ways. In this context, after a literature review on elements of narrative data visualizations, we identified a gap in detailed descriptions of narrative genres. Considering this, we conducted a focus group with professionals in the field, which resulted in the concept called “Navis Structure.” It organizes narrative genres into components for design assistance. In this case, the genres can be single-component or multi-component. Additionally, these genres were classified, considering not only this structure but also visual representation, interaction techniques, freedom of exploration, and narrative approach. Finally, we conducted a workshop with professionals experienced in data visualization to analyze and validate the proposed concept, believing that the findings contribute to advancing the understanding of narrative genres and guide future research in narrative data visualizations.
... Narrative visualisation [32] combines data visualisations with storytelling techniques such as sequencing, narration and pacing [32] to communicate a consistent and coherent data-based narrative in an engaging way. We posit that there is a natural progression from narrative visualisation to immersive storytelling. ...
... Narrative visualisation [32] combines data visualisations with storytelling techniques such as sequencing, narration and pacing [32] to communicate a consistent and coherent data-based narrative in an engaging way. We posit that there is a natural progression from narrative visualisation to immersive storytelling. ...
... The domain expert elicitation motivates immersive aspects of our design space. For the data storytelling aspects of our design space, we synthesise from three key works: Segel and Heer [32], Cao et al. [3] and Ojo and Heravi [28]. ...
... Cada uma dessas dimensões possui recursos que auxiliam os designers de visualizações narrativas. Os autores também identificaram que, embora a visualização narrativa seja umaárea de pesquisa muito recente, ela está crescendo rapidamente e recebendo maior atenção da academia [Segel and Heer 2010]. ...
... Visualizações estáticas são utilizadas há muito tempo para apoiar a narração de histórias, muitas vezes no formato de gráficos e diagramas em conjunto a textos. Neste formato, o texto transmite a história e a imagem normalmente fornece evidências de apoio ou detalhes relacionados [Segel and Heer 2010]. A visualização narrativaé uma expressão que os autores cunharam para se referiràs visualizações que incorporam a narrativa em seu design, ou seja, nas quais são utilizados elementos que favorecem a compreensão do leitor. ...
... Neste contexto, eles desenvolveram uma estrutura que sugere estratégias de design para este tipo de visualização. Uma questão emergente neste tópicoé tentar combinar narrativas com gráficos interativos, para que, assim, o usuário possa compreender e interagir com o que está sendo apresentado a ele, pois elementos narrativos podem oferecer explicações de uma forma dificilmente alcançada pelos meios tradicionais [Hullman and Diakopoulos 2011] Referenteàs narrativas visuais, elas são dispositivos que auxiliam a narrativa e estão divididas em três subcategorias: estruturas visuais, destaques e transições [Segel and Heer 2010]. As estruturas visuais organizam o progresso da história na interface, usando técnicas como barra de progresso, linha do tempo e checklist. ...
A visualização narrativa de dados surgiu para atender a crescente necessidade de apresentar dados de forma clara e eficaz aos leitores. O principal objetivo desta pesquisa é apoiar o desenvolvimento de visualizações narrativas de dados mais adequadas e centradas no leitor. Uma estrutura de componentes desenvolvida em trabalhos anteriores necessita de estudos adicionais para explorar sua aplicação em diferentes contextos, analisar diversas combinações dessas estruturas e, possívelmente, expandir o conjunto de gêneros narrativos.
... Annotations help structure viewers' mental models as they use visualizations to understand the insights behind the data [2]. Furthermore, annotating charts have been recognized as a critical task facilitating visual data analysis [3], [4], crucial for externalizing and exploring data [3], [5]- [14], aiding collaborative sensemaking [7], [15]- [22], and contributing to narrative storytelling [23]- [29]. ...
... Notably, significant research in annotation within the visualization community has been inspired by the work of practitioners. For instance, early work by Segel et al. [23] explored the role of annotations in narrative visualizations, focusing on how data journalists use annotations for storytelling. Heavily annotated charts from the New York Times graphics team, such as the connected scatterplots by Amanda Cox, Hannah Fairfield, and others [31], [32] (see Fig. 2), have inspired research on the utility of annotations for better comprehension [33], and Ren et al.'s work is inspired by the New York Times' interactive chart-making tool, Mr. Chartmaker [34]. ...
... [25], [111], [23], [112], [85], [113], [81], [114] User Engagement and Interaction ...
We present a comprehensive survey on the use of annotations in information visualizations, highlighting their crucial role in improving audience understanding and engagement with visual data. Our investigation encompasses empirical studies on annotations, showcasing their impact on user engagement, interaction, comprehension, and memorability across various contexts. We also study the existing tools and techniques for creating annotations and their diverse applications, enhancing the understanding of both practical and theoretical aspects of annotations in data visualization. Additionally, we identify existing research gaps and propose potential future research directions, making our survey a valuable resource for researchers, visualization designers, and practitioners by providing a thorough understanding of the application of annotations in visualization.
... Many authors suggest data stories convey key insights more effectively than conventional visualisations. Segel and Heer [108] noted that combining narratives with graphics offers a rich medium for presenting analysis results. ...
... These agents can offer a more engaging and structured experience by proactively guiding users through scaffolding techniques [89,95,131]. Scaffolding, an established educational strategy, aligns well with data storytelling's purpose [61,102,108,140]. Techniques often involve breaking down complex information into smaller parts, asking guiding questions, and providing feedback to help users make sense of data. ...
... Specifically, we sought to quantitatively assess how each condition enhances accuracy and reduces the time required for insights extraction from data visualisation across three intervention phases: pre-intervention, during the intervention, and post-intervention (i.e., after the intervention is removed). Including a post-intervention phase is crucial for understanding whether these supportive approaches function merely as temporary tools or also facilitate the learning of key comprehension skills in data visualisation during the process [3,7,108]. This motivates the first research question: ...
Generative AI (GenAI) agents offer a potentially scalable approach to support comprehending complex data visualisations, a skill many individuals struggle with. While data storytelling has proven effective, there is little evidence regarding the comparative effectiveness of GenAI agents. To address this gap, we conducted a randomised controlled study with 141 participants to compare the effectiveness and efficiency of data dialogues facilitated by both passive (which simply answer participants' questions about visualisations) and proactive (infused with scaffolding questions to guide participants through visualisations) GenAI agents against data storytelling in enhancing their comprehension of data visualisations. Comprehension was measured before, during, and after the intervention. Results suggest that passive GenAI agents improve comprehension similarly to data storytelling both during and after intervention. Notably, proactive GenAI agents significantly enhance comprehension after intervention compared to both passive GenAI agents and standalone data storytelling, regardless of participants' visualisation literacy, indicating sustained improvements and learning.
... In the analysis of these data narratives, three distinctive features were identified, which created the basis for three economic storylines. Prior research on data stories has focussed on narrative patterns in data journalism (Matei & Hunter, 2021;Ojo & Heravi, 2018;Segel & Heer, 2010), however, business data storylines have not been identified. Research has proven the positive effects of data storytelling competency on business performance and decision-making (Daradkeh, 2021), and this chapter specifies the role of narrative patterns in this regard. ...
... A common way to define data stories (and synonymously data narratives) is by describing what their "actions" are. An oft-cited description of data storytelling is that (a) data (story) tells a story (with data) (Borges, Correa & Silveira, 2022;Segel & Heer, 2010;Sekar, 2022). While this data-oriented operational definition focuses on agency, it promotes data or an entire data story to narrator. ...
... When data becomes the subject of a story or when the story is about data, it is defined by composition. Visual data stories may be defined by the various story elements they contain (e.g., Lee et al., 2015;Ramm et al., 2021;Segel & Heer, 2010;Shi et al., 2021;Sun et al., 2022), such as context, visuals, simplification, focus and coherence (Sekar, 2022). ...
... However, due to inherent complexity and scale, it is challenging to communicate stories extracted from dynamic graphs succinctly and accurately. In previous studies, graph comics, a comic-based storytelling medium that consists of graph visualizations, is found to be effective in narrating stories involving dynamic graphs [4,65,86]. Despite the potential benefits, it is time-consuming for users to create such graph comics based on their data, especially given the lack of dedicated authoring tools. ...
... Comics [50] are a storytelling genre that presents stories with combinations of illustrations, text, and annotations on various layouts.Segel and Heer propose using comics for data-driven storytelling in their seminal work on narrative visualization [65]. Data comics, an emerging medium of data-driven narrative visualization, leverage the visual language of comics, including layouts, characters, and captions [6,86]. ...
... • Building on Segel and Heer [65]'s taxonomy, Zhao et al. [86] first proposed data comics for narrative visualization, but our approach goes beyond their work by applying the idea to graphs. ...
Comics are an effective method for sequential data-driven storytelling, especially for dynamic graphs—graphs whose vertices and edges change over time. However, manually creating such comics is currently time-consuming, complex, and error-prone. In this paper, we propose DG COMICS, a novel comic authoring tool for dynamic graphs that allows users to semi-automatically build and annotate comics. The tool uses a newly developed hierarchical clustering algorithm to segment consecutive snapshots of dynamic graphs while preserving their chronological order. It also presents rich information on both individuals and communities extracted from dynamic graphs in multiple views, where users can explore dynamic graphs and choose what to tell in comics. For evaluation, we provide an example and report the results of a user study and an expert review.
... Segel and Heer [176] provided the first comprehensive review of data storytelling and narrative visualizations in 2010, identifying specific design strategies and relevant interaction paradigms. Their analysis also delineated different categories within genres, a classification we have adopted for our analysis of visualization types and application areas. ...
... 2) Structuring the storytelling process: The early work on defining storytelling within information visualization focused on categorizing formal aspects and definitions (e.g., genres) to create a comprehensive overview of the design space and related strategies [92,176]. Based on this inclusive perspective, almost all visualizations would be considered narrative: we could even describe a line chart with a headline, sub-line, and annotations as a narrative visualization (annotated chart). ...
... However, it can be argued whether the two types are purposes instead of narrative structures. A clearer insight into narrative data story structures is given by Segel and Heer [176] who argue that there are three different structures: linear, exploratory, and a combination thereof [176]. The latter refers to hybrid linear-nonlinear patterns, for example, a Martini Glass structure where the story starts explanatory and afterwards opens into an exploratory panel. ...
... Such questions often require textual explanations as answers [KDL*22]. Finally, data-driven storytelling employs narrative techniques to guide the audience through a sequence of visualizations and texts [RHDC18, GP01, KSJ*14, SH10]. Recently, there have been attempts to automatically generate stories from data [SXS*21, CWW*20, CZW*20, WSZ*20], but automatic data storytelling is still in its infancy. ...
... This aspect is closely related to document planning in NLG architecture [Rei07] and narrative structure in data-stories [RHDC18], which specifically concerns how the sequence of events, comprising textual elements, are temporally ordered and the potential variations in the pacing of the narrative. The narrative structure can be categorized in various ways: such as linear versus non-linear sequence [RHDC18] as well as author-driven (narrative flow intended by the author) versus reader-driven (interactive exploration by readers) [SH10]. ...
Natural language and visualization are two complementary modalities of human communication that play a crucial role in conveying information effectively. While visualizations help people discover trends, patterns and anomalies in data, natural language descriptions help explain these insights. Thus, combining text with visualizations is a prevalent technique for effectively delivering the core message of the data. Given the rise of natural language generation (NLG), there is a growing interest in automatically creating natural language descriptions for visualizations, which can be used as chart captions, answering questions about charts or telling data‐driven stories. In this survey, we systematically review the state of the art on NLG for visualizations and introduce a taxonomy of the problem. The NLG tasks fall within the domain of natural language interfaces (NLIs) for visualization, an area that has garnered significant attention from both the research community and industry. To narrow down the scope of the survey, we primarily concentrate on the research works that focus on text generation for visualizations. To characterize the NLG problem and the design space of proposed solutions, we pose five Wh‐questions, why and how NLG tasks are performed for visualizations, what the task inputs and outputs are, as well as where and when the generated texts are integrated with visualizations. We categorize the solutions used in the surveyed papers based on these ‘five Wh‐questions’. Finally, we discuss the key challenges and potential avenues for future research in this domain.
... We propose extending storytelling concepts to dashboard onboarding to enhance user engagement [29,37,48,53]. Segel and Heer's narrative visualization framework [45] identified seven narrative genres in storytelling that we adapted to create various onboarding styles. Zhao and Elmqvist [65] extended this narrative framework to include additional media types. ...
... • Martini Glass: A traversal based on the Martini glass storytelling metaphor [45]. It starts with a broad overview of the dashboard and gradually focuses on specific elements, mimicking the narrow shape of a Martini glass. ...
Onboarding a user to a visualization dashboard entails explaining its various components, including the chart types used, the data loaded, and the interactions available. Authoring such an onboarding experience is time-consuming and requires significant knowledge and little guidance on how best to complete this task. Depending on their levels of expertise, end users being onboarded to a new dashboard can be either confused and overwhelmed or disinterested and disengaged. We propose interactive dashboard tours (D-Tours) as semi-automated onboarding experiences that preserve the agency of users with various levels of expertise to keep them interested and engaged. Our interactive tours concept draws from open-world game design to give the user freedom in choosing their path through onboarding. We have implemented the concept in a tool called D-TOUR PROTOTYPE, which allows authors to craft custom interactive dashboard tours from scratch or using automatic templates. Automatically generated tours can still be customized to use different media (e.g., video, audio, and highlighting) or new narratives to produce an onboarding experience tailored to an individual user. We demonstrate the usefulness of interactive dashboard tours through use cases and expert interviews. Our evaluation shows that authors found the automation in the D-Tour Prototype helpful and time-saving, and users found the created tours engaging and intuitive. This paper and all supplemental materials are available at https://osf.io/6fbjp/.
... [1,8,27,42,57,64]). Data stories and narrative visualizations often incorporate language elements alongside data, animation, and other visual elements [14,20,21,28,31,53]. While these elements do not always result in a high degree of engagement, the use of data storytelling methods can increase overall comprehension for certain tasks [9,54]. ...
... Written rudders also provided a narrative focus, crucial for creating engaging and dynamic designs to effectively tell stories with data. Rudders build on work in narrative visualization, offering a lightweight and flexible approach to encourage narrative designs [20,53]. ...
Written language is a useful tool for non-visual creative activities like composing essays and planning searches. This paper investigates the integration of written language into the visualization design process. We create the idea of a ‘writing rudder,’ which acts as a guiding force or strategy for the designer. Via an interview study of 24 working visualization designers, we first established that only a minority of participants systematically use writing to aid in design. A second study with 15 visualization designers examined four different variants of written rudders: asking questions, stating conclusions, composing a narrative, and writing titles. Overall, participants had a positive reaction; designers recognized the benefits of explicitly writing down components of the design and indicated that they would use this approach in future design work. More specifically, two approaches — writing questions and writing conclusions/takeaways — were seen as beneficial across the design process, while writing narratives showed promise mainly for the creation stage. Although concerns around potential bias during data exploration were raised, participants also discussed strategies to mitigate such concerns. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between language and visualization, and proposes a straightforward, lightweight addition to the visualization design process.
... Retrospectives are important for various contexts: including recommendations about past notes and contexts of behaviors [71] and even for refreshing user memories [63]. Prior work has emphasized the use of narrative structures [68] or designed tools that support the presentation of analysis results [32,49,53,59,69]. While considering the narrative structure of data presentation in a report is important, as seen in these examples, building these narratives still takes time and requires additional steps to call attention to key moments in an analysis session to prepare a presentation. ...
... In the literature about collaborative sensemaking and provenance supports, it is common to incorporate aspects of narrative visualizations and presentation support features as part of visualization tools. These techniques draw on the aspects of different narrative structures [68] or design an environment that integrates a presentation support feature into the analysis [32,49,59]. While considering the narrative structure of data presentation in a report is an important consideration, as seen in these examples, building these narratives still takes time and requires additional steps to call attention to key moments in an analysis session to prepare a presentation [32,49,53,59,69]. ...
Communicating one's sensemaking during a complex analysis session to explain thought processes is hard, yet most intelligence occurs in collaborative settings. Team members require a deeper understanding of the work being completed by their peers and subordinates, but little research has fully articulated best practices for analytic provenance consumers. This work proposes an automatic summarization technique that separates an analysis session and summarizes interaction provenance as textual blurbs to allow for meta-analysis of work done. Focusing on the domain of intelligence analysis, we demonstrate our segmentation technique using five datasets, including both publicly available and classified interaction logs. We shared our demonstration with a notoriously inaccessible population of expert reviewers with experience as United States Department of Defense analysts. Our findings indicate that the proposed pipeline effectively generates cards that display key events from interaction logs, facilitating the sharing of analysis progress. Yet, we also hear that there is a need for more prominent justifications and pattern elicitation controls to communicate analysis summaries more effectively. The expert review highlights the potential of automated approaches in addressing the challenges of provenance information in complex domains. We'd like to emphasize the need for further research into provenance communication in other domains. A free copy of this paper and all supplemental materials are available at https://osf.io/j4bxt
... Numerous studies have reviewed or presented guidelines for visualizations more broadly [5,[7][8][9][10]. Their findings include overall design processes, principles, or frameworks for information visualization [9,[11][12][13][66][67][68][69]; visualization taxonomies [70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78]; the grammar of graphics [10,[79][80][81]; designing for storytelling [58,[82][83][84][85][86][87][88][89]; designing dashboards [14][15][16]; multiple views [90,91]; designing infographics [58,84,86,[92][93][94][95]; and glanceable interfaces [17,18]. Kohlhammer and Zeltzer [20] proposed a visualization architecture for time-critical contexts, aiming to merge support for decision-making with situational awareness. ...
Background
With the extensive volume of information from various and diverse data sources, it is essential to present information in a way that allows for quick understanding and interpretation. This is particularly crucial in health care, where timely insights into a patient’s condition can be lifesaving. Holistic visualizations that integrate multiple data variables into a single visual representation can enhance rapid situational awareness and support informed decision-making. However, despite the existence of numerous guidelines for different types of visualizations, this study reveals that there are currently no specific guidelines or principles for designing holistic integrated information visualizations that enable quick processing and comprehensive understanding of multidimensional data in time-critical contexts. Addressing this gap is essential for enhancing decision-making in time-critical scenarios across various domains, particularly in health care.
Objective
This study aims to establish a theoretical foundation supporting the argument that holistic integrated visualizations are a distinct type of visualization for time-critical contexts and identify applicable design principles and guidelines that can be used to design for such cases.
Methods
We systematically searched the literature for peer-reviewed research on visualization strategies, guidelines, and taxonomies. The literature selection followed the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines. The search was conducted across 6 databases: ACM Digital Library, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The search was conducted up to August 2024 using the terms (“visualisations” OR “visualizations”) AND (“guidelines” OR “taxonomy” OR “taxonomies”), with studies restricted to the English language.
Results
Of 936 papers, 46 (4.9%) were included in the final review. In total, 48% (22/46) related to providing a holistic understanding and overview of multidimensional data; 28% (13/46) focused on integrated presentation, that is, integrating or combining multidimensional data into a single visual representation; and 35% (16/46) pertained to time and designing for rapid information processing. In total, 65% (30/46) of the papers presented general information visualization or visual communication guidelines and principles. No specific guidelines or principles were found that addressed all the characteristics of holistic, integrated visualizations in time-critical contexts. A summary of the key guidelines and principles from the 46 papers was extracted, collated, and categorized into 60 guidelines that could aid in designing holistic integrated visualizations. These were grouped according to different characteristics identified in the systematic review (eg, gestalt principles, reduction, organization, abstraction, and task complexity) and further condensed into 5 main proposed guidelines.
Conclusions
Holistic integrated information visualizations in time-critical domains are a unique use case requiring a unique set of design guidelines. Our proposed 5 main guidelines, derived from existing design theories and guidelines, can serve as a starting point to enable both holistic and rapid processing of information, facilitating better-informed decisions in time-critical contexts.
... The integration of music with visuals facilitates the creation of a robust narrative structure that effectively captures the audience's attention. A narrative visualization, as conceptualized by Segel & Heer (2010), is defined as a visual narrative that is underpinned by a sequence of causally related events. This concept suggests that visual storytelling is an effective method for expressing a narrative. ...
Music and visual storytelling media are one of the fastest-growing topics within the fields of media studies and musicology, as well as interest for film production. Visual storytelling is the art of telling stories with the use of visual components made up of photography, mise-en-scene, editing, and cinematography in a bid to attract the masses. On the other hand, media is any platform that presents visual narration to the audience, for example, through film, TV, and digital streaming services (Potter, 2010). Through statistics, it was shown that 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual, with visuals being processed 60,000 times faster in the brain than text, hence making visual storytelling in media a more critical aspect. Music, in this respect, serves to underline important aspects and enhance the experience several times over compared with the expression of thoughts through visual elements alone (Szita et al., 2018). By creating emotions, an ambiance, and generally constructing a perception of the visual story inside the mind of the audience, music participates in bringing its storytelling experience more profound into the world of media (Kreutz & Feldhaus, 2018). This paper will address the theoretical framework, historical perspective, psychological impact, narrative structure, genre specific analysis, technological advancement, cultural implications, case studies, challenges, and future music directions in visual storytelling in media.
... To relate risks to existing knowledge, visual metaphors like hazard labels can be effective (Zelenka et al. 2021), along with personalized risk presentations using individuals' own data (Luccioni et al. 2021). To foster engaging exploration, visualizations should employ narrative techniques, interactive features, and aesthetic styles to enhance engagement and understanding, using methods like story structures, gamified exploration, and contrasting colors (Segel and Heer 2010;Lavie and Tractinsky 2004;Crawford and Joler 2023). ...
The prevailing methodologies for visualizing AI risks have focused on technical issues such as data biases and model inaccuracies, often overlooking broader societal risks like job loss and surveillance. Moreover, these visualizations are typically designed for tech-savvy individuals, neglecting those with limited technical skills. To address these challenges, we propose the Atlas of AI Risks—a narrative-style tool designed to map the broad risks associated with various AI technologies in a way that is understandable to non-technical individuals as well. To both develop and evaluate this tool, we conducted two crowdsourcing studies. The first, involving 40 participants, identified the design requirements for visualizing AI risks for decision-making and guided the development of the Atlas. The second study, with 140 participants reflecting the US population in terms of age, sex, and ethnicity, assessed the usability and aesthetics of the Atlas to ensure it met those requirements. Using facial recognition technology as a case study, we found that the Atlas is more user-friendly than a baseline visualization, with a more classic and expressive aesthetic, and is more effective in presenting a balanced assessment of the risks and benefits of facial recognition. Finally, we discuss how our design choices make the Atlas adaptable for broader use, allowing it to generalize across the diverse range of technology applications represented in a database that reports various AI incidents.
... Related to goals for reporting and presentation are strategies for creating data narratives and adopting storytelling metaphors. Segel and Heer [48] discussed the design space for data storytelling considering how graphical techniques and interactivity can support narrative structure and flow. Gershon and Page [22] argued for the value of adopting storytelling for visualization via techniques to enable fast and easy understanding of more complex information. ...
The complexity of exploratory data analysis poses significant challenges for collaboration and effective communication of analytic workflows. Automated methods can alleviate these challenges by summarizing workflows into more interpretable segments, but designing effective provenance-summarization algorithms depends on understanding the factors that guide how humans segment their analysis. To address this, we conducted an empirical study that explores how users naturally present, communicate, and summarize visual data analysis activities. Our qualitative analysis uncovers key patterns and high-level categories that inform users' decisions when segmenting analytic workflows, revealing the nuanced interplay between data-driven actions and strategic thinking. These insights provide a robust empirical foundation for algorithm development and highlight critical factors that must be considered to enhance the design of visual analytics tools. By grounding algorithmic decisions in human behavior, our findings offer valuable contributions to developing more intuitive and practical tools for automated summarization and clear presentation of analytic provenance.
... It has been widely applied in various scenarios [3,20,35,7], including science education, clinical diagnosis with therapy interpretation, product popularization, and public policy advocacy, among others. Creating data stories is a comprehensive and costly effort that integrates multiple processes: mining relevant data, interpreting data insights, organizing textual narratives, and rendering visual illustrations [39,24]. Hence, the automatic generation of data stories is crucial for broader applications, despite its inherent complexity [51,25,26]. ...
Data-driven storytelling serves as a crucial bridge for communicating ideas in a persuasive way. However, the manual creation of data stories is a multifaceted, labor-intensive, and case-specific effort, limiting their broader application. As a result, automating the creation of data stories has emerged as a significant research thrust. Despite advances in Artificial Intelligence, the systematic generation of data stories remains challenging due to their hybrid nature: they must frame a perspective based on a seed idea in a top-down manner, similar to traditional storytelling, while coherently grounding insights of given evidence in a bottom-up fashion, akin to data analysis. These dual requirements necessitate precise constraints on the permissible space of a data story. In this viewpoint, we propose integrating constraints into the data story generation process. Defined upon the hierarchies of interpretation and articulation, constraints shape both narrations and illustrations to align with seed ideas and contextualized evidence. We identify the taxonomy and required functionalities of these constraints. Although constraints can be heterogeneous and latent, we explore the potential to represent them in a computation-friendly fashion via Domain-Specific Languages. We believe that leveraging constraints will facilitate both artistic and scientific aspects of data story generation.
... Data video is one of the popular data storytelling genres [43]. Prior studies have demonstrated that compared to static presentations, data videos, with their visual animations and audio narration, offer additional channels of communication, resulting in improved information transformation and audience engagement [6,11,13,38]. ...
Creating data videos that effectively narrate stories with animated visuals requires substantial effort and expertise. A promising research trend is leveraging the easy-to-use natural language (NL) interaction to automatically synthesize data video components from narrative content like text narrations, or NL commands that specify user-required designs. Nevertheless, previous research has overlooked the integration of narrative content and specific design authoring commands, leading to generated results that lack customization or fail to seamlessly fit into the narrative context. To address these issues, we introduce a novel paradigm for creating data videos, which seamlessly integrates users' authoring and narrative intents in a unified format called annotated narration, allowing users to incorporate NL commands for design authoring as inline annotations within the narration text. Informed by a formative study on users' preference for annotated narration, we develop a prototype system named Data Playwright that embodies this paradigm for effective creation of data videos. Within Data Playwright, users can write annotated narration based on uploaded visualizations. The system's interpreter automatically understands users' inputs and synthesizes data videos with narration-animation interplay, powered by large language models. Finally, users can preview and fine-tune the video. A user study demonstrated that participants can effectively create data videos with Data Playwright by effortlessly articulating their desired outcomes through annotated narration.
... Narrative text plays an essential role in data-centric storytelling [52], often in conjunction with visualizations to promote information dissemination. For example, a set of works focuses on the efficient writing of data documents enriched in visualizations to present data insights [10,12,15,32,45,55,67,68]. Aiming at enlivening news articles, Contextifier [25] and NewsViews [21] automatically generate annotated visualizations based on the news text to aid storytelling. ...
Data-rich documents are commonly found across various fields such as business, finance, and science. However, a general limitation of these documents for reading is their reliance on text to convey data and facts. Visual representation of text aids in providing a satisfactory reading experience in comprehension and engagement. However, existing work emphasizes presenting the insights of local text context, rather than fully conveying data stories within the whole paragraphs and engaging readers. To provide readers with satisfactory data stories, this paper presents Narrative Player, a novel method that automatically revives data narratives with consistent and contextualized visuals. Specifically, it accepts a paragraph and corresponding data table as input and leverages LLMs to characterize the clauses and extract contextualized data facts. Subsequently, the facts are transformed into a coherent visualization sequence with a carefully designed optimization-based approach. Animations are also assigned between adjacent visualizations to enable seamless transitions. Finally, the visualization sequence, transition animations, and audio narration generated by text-to-speech technologies are rendered into a data video. The evaluation results showed that the automatic-generated data videos were well-received by participants and experts for enhancing reading.
... This shift in utility has led to an extensive body of research aimed at cataloging and categorizing dashboards, focusing on their communication goals [45], dashboard intent [42], their interaction mechanisms [62], and conversational design heuristics [48], all aspects that underscore the growing importance of dashboards to support effective communication of data to their intended audience. Among the diverse components that make up a dashboard, text elements such as titles, labels, captions, and data descriptions play a pivotal role in this communication [13,25,47,64]. An assessment of public dashboards in the wild found a majority (55%) contained blocks of text [52], stressing the prevalence of textual elements in dashboard design. ...
There is increased interest in understanding the interplay between text and visuals in the field of data visualization. However, this attention has predominantly been on the use of text in standalone visualizations (such as text annotation overlays) or augmenting text stories supported by a series of independent views. In this paper, we shift from the traditional focus on single-chart annotations to characterize the nuanced but crucial communication role of text in the complex environment of interactive dashboards. Through a survey and analysis of 190 dashboards in the wild, plus 13 expert interview sessions with experienced dashboard authors, we highlight the distinctive nature of text as an integral component of the dashboard experience, while delving into the categories, semantic levels, and functional roles of text, and exploring how these text elements are coalesced by dashboard authors to guide and inform dashboard users. Our contributions are threefold. First, we distill qualitative and quantitative findings from our studies to characterize current practices of text use in dashboards, including a categorization of text-based components and design patterns. Second, we leverage current practices and existing literature to propose, discuss, and validate recommended practices for text in dashboards, embodied as a set of 12 heuristics that underscore the semantic and functional role of text in offering navigational cues, contextualizing data insights, supporting reading order, among other concerns. Third, we reflect on our findings to identify gaps and propose opportunities for data visualization researchers to push the boundaries on text usage for dashboards, from authoring support and interactivity to text generation and content personalization. Our research underscores the significance of elevating text as a first-class citizen in data visualization, and the need to support the inclusion of textual components and their interactive affordances in dashboard design.
Textual content is effectively supported by data visualization in many contexts, allowing readers to assess the written content by looking at data visualizations. Among the fields that benefit from it are journalism and academia, from online blogs to analytical reports. While research has explored the effectiveness of linking text and data visualizations investigating learning, engagement, and improvement in readers’ skills regarding better information understanding and recall, we could commit more to using this practice in information verification. This paper investigates the impact of linking text modeled as discussions and data visualizations to identify text-to-visualization misalignment. First, we propose a text-visualization interaction-based approach, named HOOD, to aid users in online data-driven discussions by integrating deictic data visualization with messages, avoiding tab switching, and enabling fine-grain text-to-visualization linking. Then, we present a within-subjects design user study comparing HOOD with two alternative text-to-visualization layouts (also referred to as data access modalities) engaging 22 participants in identifying misalignment in text linked to data visualizations in 18 hand-crafted discussions. Our findings reveal that participants experienced 10% improvement with HOOD reaching up to 80% of success rate compared to alternative data access modalities. Furthermore, the time required for assessments remarkably decreased, and participants consistently rated HOOD as the preferred data access modality.
Effective narrative visualization communicates information by integrating story-telling and data visualization in a comprehensible, compelling manner. The compelling aspect of effective narrative visualization consequentially results in the potential to shift the attitude of an audience. However, there is much to understand about how narrative visualization can best be designed to influence target audiences. This paper focuses on an empirical experiment where we examined the effects of two communication strategies - anthropomorphism and personal identification - on a young adult audience. In particular, we wanted to understand which strategy, when integrated into narrative visualization, can nudge a specific audience's attitude towards greater consideration in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our results indicated that the personal identification communication strategy was the most successful in nudging participants. This study contributes a better grasp of how technologies such as narrative visualization, using different communication strategies, can deliver more targeted messaging.
Augmented video presentation tools provide a natural way for presenters to interact with their content, resulting in engaging experiences for remote audiences, such as when a presenter uses hand gestures to manipulate and direct attention to visual aids overlaid on their webcam feed. However, authoring and customizing these presentations can be challenging, particularly when presenting dynamic data visualization (i.e., animated charts). To this end, we introduce VisConductor, an authoring and presentation tool that equips presenters with the ability to configure gestures that control affect-varying visualization animation, foreshadow visualization transitions, direct attention to notable data points, and animate the disclosure of annotations. These gestures are integrated into configurable widgets, allowing presenters to trigger content transformations by executing gestures within widget boundaries, with feedback visible only to them. Altogether, our palette of widgets provides a level of flexibility appropriate for improvisational presentations and ad-hoc content transformations, such as when responding to audience engagement. To evaluate VisConductor, we conducted two studies focusing on presenters (𝑁=11) and audience members (𝑁=11). Our findings indicate that our approach taken with VisConductor can facilitate interactive and engaging remote presentations with dynamic visual aids. Reflecting on our findings, we also offer insights to inform the future of augmented video presentation tools.
Data stories are sequences of data facts connected through a meaningful narrative and combine data visualizations and storytelling to convey information effectively. They have gained popularity due to data journalism, evolving into a hybrid practice involving computer science, design, and storytelling. Creating data stories requires diverse skills however there is a lack of guidance. We found one model that identifies the process of transforming data into visual stories following three stages; explore data, make a story and tell a story. Based on this approach, we surveyed recent literature on data stories in order to classify their contributions to each of the three stages. The contribution of this review is the proposal of guidelines for authors that provide greater detail to each stage and gaps for future research. We hope that by better understanding the design process and the guidelines that emerge from it, we will enrich the quality of the data stories and thus make them more meaningful and engaging to readers.
In today's data-driven world, data visualization has emerged as a powerful tool for transforming raw data into actionable insights. This paper explores the profound impact of data visualization across various industries, including banking, healthcare, and education. By utilizing advanced visualization tools, professionals can gain unparalleled clarity in identifying patterns, trends, and hidden opportunities within complex datasets. The introduction of dynamic dashboards and immersive 3D representations are revolutionizing the process of data interpretation, enabling real-time monitoring and enhanced spatial understanding. This research study analyzes the transformative effects of data visualization on decision-making, particularly in the realm of finance and budgeting. Visual representations can uncover hidden patterns, mitigate risks, and inform strategic decisions. Beyond these industries, data visualization is also revolutionizing marketing, manufacturing, and education. By enhancing creativity, streamlining workflows, and improving communication, visual experiences are driving innovation and progress. Overall, data visualization is a critical tool for unlocking the value of data in today's information-intensive world. By providing actionable insights and driving effective decision-making, data visualization is transforming industries and empowering organizations to achieve their goals.
Purpose
While designing personally meaningful activities with data technologies can support the development of data literacies, this paper aims to focuses on the overlooked aspect of how learners navigate tensions between personal experiences and data trends.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors report on an analysis of three student cases from a design study in which middle and high school youth assembled family migration stories using data visualization technologies with socioeconomic and demographic data. The authors used interaction analysis to examine how students responded to misalignments they encountered between their families’ experiences and data trends in their models, drawing on the theoretical construct of epistemic data agency.
Findings
This case analysis demonstrates ways in which students enacted epistemic data agency. Instructional support can help students deepen inquiry and avoid certain pitfalls, such as encoding data in unsound or misleading ways to support a particular story, while encouraging students to see themselves as an epistemic authority on par with data. This study opens pathways for future research that considers how data can shape personal narratives and how students can leverage their experiences in the stories they tell with data.
Originality/value
The authors introduce the construct of epistemic data agency to describe the conceptual and material practices that reveal and shape students’ relationships to the data. The descriptions of students enacting epistemic data agency in assembling data stories informs the understanding of how to better elevate and recognize students’ efforts in relation to disciplinary norms and support deeper, meaningful student learning with and about data.
The importance of data charts is self-evident, given their ability to express complex data in a simple format that facilitates quick and easy comparisons, analysis, and consumption. However, the inherent visual nature of the charts creates barriers for people with visual impairments to reap the associated benefts to the same extent as their sighted peers. While extant research has predominantly focused on understanding and addressing these barriers for blind screen reader users, the needs of low-vision screen magnifer users have been largely overlooked. In an interview study, almost all low-vision participants stated that it was challenging to interact with data charts on small screen devices such as smartphones and tablets, even though they could technically “see” the chart content. They ascribed these challenges mainly to the magnifcation-induced loss of visual context that connected data points with each other and also with chart annotations, e.g., axis values. In this paper, we present a method that addresses this problem by automatically transforming charts that are typically non-interactive images into personalizable interactive charts which allow selective viewing of desired data points and preserve visual context as much as possible under screen enlargement. We evaluated our method in a usability study with 26 low-vision participants, who all performed a set of representative chart-related tasks under different study conditions. In the study, we observed that our method signifcantly improved the usability of charts over both the status quo screen magnifer and a state-of-the-art space compaction-based solution.
Data videos increasingly becoming a popular data storytelling form represented by visual and audio integration. In recent years, more and more researchers have explored many narrative structures for effective and attractive data storytelling. Meanwhile, the Hero's Journey provides a classic narrative framework specific to the Hero's story that has been adopted by various mediums. There are continuous discussions about applying Hero's Journey to data stories. However, so far, little systematic and practical guidance on how to create a data video for a specific story type like the Hero's Journey, as well as how to manipulate its sound and visual designs simultaneously. To fulfill this gap, we first identified 48 data videos aligned with the Hero's Journey as the common storytelling from 109 high-quality data videos. Then, we examined how existing practices apply Hero's Journey for creating data videos. We coded the 48 data videos in terms of the narrative stages, sound design, and visual design according to the Hero's Journey structure. Based on our findings, we proposed a design space to provide practical guidance on the narrative, visual, and sound custom design for different narrative segments of the hero's journey (i.e., Departure, Initiation, Return) through data video creation. To validate our proposed design space, we conducted a user study where 20 participants were invited to design data videos with and without our design space guidance, which was evaluated by two experts. Results show that our design space provides useful and practical guidance for data storytellers effectively creating data videos with the Hero's Journey.
As basketball's popularity surges, fans often find themselves confused and overwhelmed by the rapid game pace and complexity. Basketball tactics, involving a complex series of actions, require substantial knowledge to be fully understood. This complexity leads to a need for additional information and explanation, which can distract fans from the game. To tackle these challenges, we present Sportify, a Visual Question Answering system that integrates narratives and embedded visualization for demystifying basketball tactical questions, aiding fans in understanding various game aspects. We propose three novel action visualizations (i.e., Pass, Cut, and Screen) to demonstrate critical action sequences. To explain the reasoning and logic behind players' actions, we leverage a large-language model (LLM) to generate narratives. We adopt a storytelling approach for complex scenarios from both first and third-person perspectives, integrating action visualizations. We evaluated Sportify with basketball fans to investigate its impact on understanding of tactics, and how different personal perspectives of narratives impact the understanding of complex tactic with action visualizations. Our evaluation with basketball fans demonstrates Sportify's capability to deepen tactical insights and amplify the viewing experience. Furthermore, third-person narration assists people in getting in-depth game explanations while first-person narration enhances fans' game engagement
Annotations play a vital role in highlighting critical aspects of visualizations, aiding in data externalization and exploration, collaborative sensemaking, and visual storytelling. However, despite their widespread use, we identified a lack of a design space for common practices for annotations. In this paper, we evaluated over 1,800 static annotated charts to understand how people annotate visualizations in practice. Through qualitative coding of these diverse real-world annotated charts, we explored three primary aspects of annotation usage patterns: analytic purposes for chart annotations (e.g., present, identify, summarize, or compare data features), mechanisms for chart annotations (e.g., types and combinations of annotations used, frequency of different annotation types across chart types, etc.), and the data source used to generate the annotations. We then synthesized our findings into a design space of annotations, highlighting key design choices for chart annotations. We presented three case studies illustrating our design space as a practical framework for chart annotations to enhance the communication of visualization insights. All supplemental materials are available at
https://shorturl.at/bAGM1
.
Most designers know that yellow text presented against a blue background reads clearly and easily, but how many can explain why, and what really are the best ways to help others and ourselves clearly see key patterns in a bunch of data? This book explores the art and science of why we see objects the way we do. Based on the science of perception and vision, the author presents the key principles at work for a wide range of applications--resulting in visualization of improved clarity, utility, and persuasiveness. The book offers practical guidelines that can be applied by anyone: interaction designers, graphic designers of all kinds (including web designers), data miners, and financial analysts.
Interactive history tools, ranging from basic undo and redo to branching timelines of user actions, facilitate iterative forms of interaction. In this paper, we investigate the design of history mechanisms for information visualization. We present a design space analysis of both architectural and interface issues, identifying design decisions and associated trade-offs. Based on this analysis, we contribute a design study of graphical history tools for Tableau, a database visualization system. These tools record and visualize interaction histories, support data analysis and communication of findings, and contribute novel mechanisms for presenting, managing, and exporting histories. Furthermore, we have analyzed aggregated collections of history sessions to evaluate Tableau usage. We describe additional tools for analyzing users' history logs and how they have been applied to study usage patterns in Tableau.
We describe the design and deployment of Many Eyes, a public web site where users may upload data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on discussions. The goal of the site is to support collaboration around visualizations at a large scale by fostering a social style of data analysis in which visualizations not only serve as a discovery tool for individuals but also as a medium to spur discussion among users. To support this goal, the site includes novel mechanisms for end-user creation of visualizations and asynchronous collaboration around those visualizations. In addition to describing these technologies, we provide a preliminary report on the activity of our users.
Net paper readers have been shown to read deeper into articles than newspaper readers. It has also been claimed that newspaper readers rather scan than read newspapers. Do these findings mean that net paper readers read proportionally more than newspaper readers? This paper presents results showing that in fact net paper readers scan more and read less than newspaper readers. We furthermore investigate whether this result can be explained by the differences in layout, navigation structure and purpose of reading between the two media.
In this paper we discuss the efficacy of storytelling for information visualization. We posit that computer technology provides us with new media and modalities that can now be used to convey information in a story- like fashion. This paper is based on work of Thomas, Gershon and Ward.
This paper describes mechanisms for asynchronous collaboration in the context of information visualization, recasting visualizations as not just analytic tools, but social spaces. We contribute the design and implementation of sense.us, a web site supporting asynchronous collaboration across a variety of visualization types. The site supports view sharing, discussion, graphical annotation, and social navigation and includes novel interaction elements. We report the results of user studies of the system, observing emergent patterns of social data analysis, including cycles of observation and hypothesis, and the complementary roles of social navigation and data-driven exploration.
The article reports that visualisation allows to reveal information as accurately as if the viewer is watching a movie. A well-told story conveys great quantities of information in relatively few words in a format that is easily assimilated by the listener or viewer. Stories are just also more compelling. Images hold a considerable amount of information a viewer might grasp quickly. But images are prone to uncertainties and might require some clarification. Transforming the representation from text narrative to visual domain requires adding more information to the presentation. Information visualization is a process that transforms data, information, and knowledge into a form that relies on the human visual system. The user/viewer of the visualization needs to integrate the information streams, thoroughly understand them, and make decisions based on their information in a timely fashion. Information visualization combines aspects of imaging, graphics, scientific visualisation, and human computer and human-information interactions, as well as information technology. The flood of complex information moving into industrial and military command centers needs to be analyzed. In creating a better and more appealing representation, the designer who created visualizations in the figure tried to make the transition between disparate pieces of information appear more continuous. INSET: Discovering Visual Metaphors.
A new hypothesis about the role of focused attention is proposed. The feature-integration theory of attention suggests that attention must be directed serially to each stimulus in a display whenever conjunctions of more than one separable feature are needed to characterize or distinguish the possible objects presented. A number of predictions were tested in a variety of paradigms including visual search, texture segregation, identification and localization, and using both separable dimensions (shape and color) and local elements or parts of figures (lines, curves, etc. in letters) as the features to be integrated into complex wholes. The results were in general consistent with the hypothesis. They offer a new set of criteria for distinguishing separable from integral features and a new rationale for predicting which tasks will show attention limits and which will not.
Five important trends have emerged from recent work on computational models of focal visual attention that emphasize the bottom-up, image-based control of attentional deployment. First, the perceptual saliency of stimuli critically depends on the surrounding context. Second, a unique 'saliency map' that topographically encodes for stimulus conspicuity over the visual scene has proved to be an efficient and plausible bottom-up control strategy. Third, inhibition of return, the process by which the currently attended location is prevented from being attended again, is a crucial element of attentional deployment. Fourth, attention and eye movements tightly interplay, posing computational challenges with respect to the coordinate system used to control attention. And last, scene understanding and object recognition strongly constrain the selection of attended locations. Insights from these five key areas provide a framework for a computational and neurobiological understanding of visual attention.
In this paper we investigate the effectiveness of animated transitions between common statistical data graphics such as bar charts, pie charts, and scatter plots. We extend theoretical models of data graphics to include such transitions, introducing a taxonomy of transition types. We then propose design principles for creating effective transitions and illustrate the application of these principles in DynaVis, a visualization system featuring animated data graphics. Two controlled experiments were conducted to assess the efficacy of various transition types, finding that animated transitions can significantly improve graphical perception.
A story is a powerful abstraction used by intelligence analysts to conceptualize threats and understand patterns as part of the analytical process. This paper demonstrates a system that detects geo-temporal patterns and integrates story narration to increase analytic sense-making cohesion in GeoTime. The GeoTime geo-temporal event visualization tool was augmented with a story system that uses narratives, hypertext linked visualizations, visual annotations, and pattern detection to create an environment for analytic exploration and communication, thereby assisting the analyst in identifying, extracting, arranging and presenting stories within the data The story system lets analysts operate at the story level with higher-level abstractions of data, such as behaviors and events, while staying connected to the evidence. The story system was developed and evaluated in collaboration with analysts.
All of Inflation's Little Parts. The New York Times
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When Did Your County's Jobs Disappear? The Washington Post/Slate
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En-riching animations
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Paths to the Top of the Home Run Charts. The New York Times
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John Snow's Chart of Deaths from Cholera
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Banks' Earnings: How Compensation Relates to Performance
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Budget 2010: Reaction from around the UK. Guardian
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The World Economy Turns the Corner
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Telling stories using data: An interview with Jonathan Harris
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The Climate Agenda. The Washington Post
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Formula One 2010: Driver's Rankings
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The Jobless Rate for People Like You. The New York Times
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S. Carter, A. Cox, and K. Quealy. The Jobless Rate for People Like You. The New York Times, 2009. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/ 2009/11/06/business/economy/unemployment-lines.html.
CNN hits the wall for the election
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UK Economic Data. Fi-nancial Times
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Deadly Offensive: Taliban Attacks in Pakistan
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The Art & Craft of Feature Writing
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A Map of Olympic Medals. The New York Times
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Show Me: New ways of visualising data
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The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986-2008. The New York Times
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M. Bloch, L. Byron, S. Carter, and A. Cox. The Ebb and Flow of Movies: Box Office Receipts 1986-2008. The New York Times, 2008. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/02/23/movies/ 20080223_REVENUE%_GRAPHIC.html.
How Americans Spend their Day
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Reading or scanning? a study of newspaper and net paper reading The Mind's Eye: Cognitive and Applied Aspects of Eye Movement Research
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K. Holmqvist, J. Holsanova, M. Barthelson, and D. Lundqvist. Reading or scanning? a study of newspaper and net paper reading. In J. R. Hyönä and H. Deubel, editors, The Mind's Eye: Cognitive and Applied Aspects of Eye Movement Research, pages 657–670.
Minnesota Employment Explorer
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Analyzing Obama's Schedule. The Washington Post
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Oscars 2010: The Best Picture Nominees. Guardian
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Eyes on the News. The Poynter Institute
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Lighting Up Hadrian's Wall. Guardian
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The Elements and Structure of Narrative
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Comparison of Bear Markets. The New York Times
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Faces of the Dead. The New York Times
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On the Map: Five Major North Korean Prison Camps. The Washington Post
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