skip to main content
10.1145/2702123.2702431acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Understanding Data Videos: Looking at Narrative Visualization through the Cinematography Lens

Published:18 April 2015Publication History

ABSTRACT

Data videos, motion graphics that incorporate visualizations about facts, are increasingly gaining popularity as a means of telling stories with data. However, very little is systematically recorded about (a) what elements are featured in data videos and (b) the processes used to create them. In this article, we provide initial insights to build this knowledge. We first report on a qualitative analysis of 50 professionally designed data videos, extracting and exposing their most salient constituents. Second, we report on a series of workshops with experienced storytellers from cinematography, graphics design and screenplay writing. We provided them with a set of data facts and visualizations and observed them create storyboards for data videos. From these exploratory studies, we derive broader implications for the design of an authoring tool to enable a wide audience to create data videos. Our findings highlight the importance of providing a flexible tool supporting a non-linear creation process and allowing users to iteratively go back to different phases of the process.

Skip Supplemental Material Section

Supplemental Material

pn1606-file3.mp4

mp4

27.9 MB

p1459.mp4

mp4

120.8 MB

References

  1. Divorces in 2012. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-inengland-and-wales/index.html.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  2. The general (1926). http://explore.bfi.org.uk/ 4ce2b6aae85f3.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  3. Oxford online dictionary. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  4. Use a picture. it's worth a thousand words. Speakers Give Sound Advice, Syracuse Post Standard (page 18), March 28, 1911.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  5. 99% v 1%: the data behind the occupy movement. http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/video/2011/ nov/16/99-v-1-occupy-data-animation, 2012.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  6. Global air traffic. http://www.rightcolours.com/portfolio2.html, 2012.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  7. Racing against history. http://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2012/08/01/sports/olympics/racing-againsthistory.html?_r=0, 2012.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  8. An infographic exploration of online video. http://www.shutterstock.com/blog/an-infographicexploration-of-online-video, Shutterstock, 2014.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  9. Bateman, S., Mandryk, R. L., Gutwin, C., Genest, A., McDine, D., and Brooks, C. Useful junk?: the effects of visual embellishment on comprehension and memorability of charts. Proc. CHI, 2573--2582, 2010. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  10. Borkin, M. A., Vo, A. A., Bylinskii, Z., Isola, P., Sunkavalli, S., Oliva, A., and Pfister, H. What makes a visualization memorable? IEEE TVCG (InfoVis '13) 19, 12 (2013), 2306--2315. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  11. Brehmer, M., Carpendale, S., Lee, B., and Tory, M. Predesign empiricism for information visualization: Scenarios, methods, and challenges. Proc. BELIV Workshop, ACM Press (2014), 147--151. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  12. Satyanarayan, A. and Heer, J. Authoring narrative visualizations with ellipsis. Proc. EuroVis, (2014).Google ScholarGoogle ScholarCross RefCross Ref
  13. Cohn, N. Visual narrative structure. Cognitive science 37, 3 (2013), 413--452.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  14. Eccles, R., Kapler, T., Harper, R., and Wright, W. Stories in geotime. Information Visualization 7, 1 (2008), 3--17. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  15. Freytag, G. Technique of the Drama: An Exposition of Dramatic Composition and Art. University Press of the Pacific, 1904.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  16. Gershon, N., and Page, W. What storytelling can do for information visualization. CACM 44, 8 (2001), 31--37. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  17. Glaser, B. G., and Strauss, A. L. The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research. Transaction Publishers, 2009.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  18. Heer, J., Mackinlay, J., Stolte, C., and Agrawala, M. Graphical histories for visualization: Supporting analysis, communication, and evaluation. IEEE TVCG (InfoVis '08) 14, 6 (2008), 1189--1196. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  19. Hullman, J., and Diakopoulos, N. Visualization rhetoric: Framing effects in narrative visualization. IEEE TVCG (InfoVis '11) 17, 12 (2011), 2231--2240. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  20. Hullman, J., Drucker, S., Riche, N. H., Lee, B., Fisher, D., and Adar, E. A deeper understanding of sequence in narrative visualization. IEEE TVCG (InfoVis '13) 19, 12 (2013), 2406--2415. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  21. Jern, M., Rogstadius, J., Astrom, T., and Ynnerman, A. Visual analytics presentation tools applied in html documents. Proc. IV, IEEE (2008), pp. 200--207. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  22. Kosara, R., and Mackinlay, J. Storytelling: The next step for visualization. IEEE Computer 46, 5 (2013), 44--50. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  23. Ma, K.-L., Liao, I., Frazier, J., Hauser, H., and Kostis, H.-N. Scientific storytelling using visualization. IEEE CG&A 32, 1 (2012), 12--19. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  24. Mascelli, J. V. The five C's of cinematography.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  25. McCloud, S. Understanding comics: The invisible art. William Morrow Paperbacks, 1994.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  26. Richards, L. Handling qualitative data: A practical guide. Sage Publications, 2009.Google ScholarGoogle Scholar
  27. Segel, E., and Heer, J. Narrative visualization: Telling stories with data. IEEE TVCG (InfoVis '10) 16, 6 (2010), 1139--1148. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  28. Viegas, F. B., Wattenberg, M., van Ham, F., Kriss, J., and McKeon, M. Manyeyes: a site for visualization at internet scale. IEEE TVCG (InfoVis '07) 13, 6 (2007), 1121--1128. Google ScholarGoogle ScholarDigital LibraryDigital Library
  29. Wojtkowski, W. and Wojtkowski, W. G. Storytelling: its role in information visualization. European Systems Science Congress (2002).Google ScholarGoogle Scholar

Index Terms

  1. Understanding Data Videos: Looking at Narrative Visualization through the Cinematography Lens

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Login options

    Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.

    Sign in
    • Published in

      cover image ACM Conferences
      CHI '15: Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      April 2015
      4290 pages
      ISBN:9781450331456
      DOI:10.1145/2702123

      Copyright © 2015 ACM

      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 18 April 2015

      Permissions

      Request permissions about this article.

      Request Permissions

      Check for updates

      Qualifiers

      • research-article

      Acceptance Rates

      CHI '15 Paper Acceptance Rate486of2,120submissions,23%Overall Acceptance Rate6,199of26,314submissions,24%

      Upcoming Conference

      CHI '24
      CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
      May 11 - 16, 2024
      Honolulu , HI , USA

    PDF Format

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader