A Deeper Understanding of Sequence in Narrative Visualization

Abstract

Conveying a narrative with visualizations often requires choosing an order in which to present visualizations. While evidence exists that narrative sequencing in traditional stories can affect comprehension and memory, little is known about how sequencing choices affect narrative visualization. We consider the forms and reactions to sequencing in narrative visualization presentations to provide a deeper understanding with a focus on linear, 'slideshow-style' presentations. We conduct a qualitative analysis of 42 professional narrative visualizations to gain empirical knowledge on the forms that structure and sequence take. Based on the results of this study we propose a graph-driven approach for automatically identifying effective sequences in a set of visualizations to be presented linearly. Our approach identifies possible transitions in a visualization set and prioritizes local (visualization-to-visualization) transitions based on an objective function that minimizes the cost of transitions from the audience perspective. We conduct two studies to validate this function. We also expand the approach with additional knowledge of user preferences for different types of local transitions and the effects of global sequencing strategies on memory, preference, and comprehension. Our results include a relative ranking of types of visualization transitions by the audience perspective and support for memory and subjective rating benefits of visualization sequences that use parallelism as a structural device. We discuss how these insights can guide the design of narrative visualization and systems that support optimization of visualization sequence.

Improving Bayesian Reasoning: The Effects of Phrasing, Visualization, and Spatial Ability

“…Such storytelling techniques are becoming increasingly popular in recent years [22,23,36] and have even been recently referred to as "the next step for visualization" [27].…”

“…Still, such storytelling techniques have been shown to be effective for communicating real world data [22,23,27,36]. The tasks in this study, however, go beyond typical information dissemination, as users had to understand information known to be inherently challenging for most people.…”

Business information visualization intellectual contributions: An integrative framework of visualization capabilities and dimensions of visual intelligence

“…Other storytelling topics such as the role of sequencing in visual narrative [118], classification of patterns [119], scientific storytelling [120], field history and related research agenda [110] are offering promising new frontiers for storytelling using business data.…”

Using Data Visualisation to tell Stories about Collections

“…The scope for narrative visualisation in data journalism has been reviewed by Segel & Heer (2010), Hullman & Diakopoulos (2011), Hullman et al (2013). While static visualisations have a history of supporting narrative in associated text, an "emerging class of visualizations attempts to combine narratives with interactive graphics" (Segel & Heer 2010: 1).…”