Design Patterns for Data Comics

Abstract

Data comics for data-driven storytelling are inspired by the visual language of comics and aim to communicate insights in data through visualizations. While comics are widely known, few examples of data comics exist and there has not been any structured analysis nor guidance for their creation. We introduce data-comic design-patterns, each describing a set of panels with a specific narrative purpose, that allow for rapid storyboarding of data comics while showcasing their expressive potential. Our patterns are derived from i) analyzing common patterns in infographics, datavideos, and existing data comics, ii) our experiences creating data comics for different scenarios. Our patterns demonstrate how data comics allow an author to combine the best of both worlds: spatial layout and overview from infographics as well as linearity and narration from videos and presentations.

Picturing Science: Design Patterns in Graphical Abstracts

“…However, we believe the design patterns that we identified are not specific to any domain. Moreover, we suspect that our design patterns could also be applied to other genres of scientific presentations such as posters, infographics, or data comics [3]. As GAs become a more common requirement, future work should seek more reliable ways of collecting graphical abstracts across disciplines.…”

Cheat Sheets for Data Visualization Techniques

“…Comics in particular, with their unique combination of complementary text and pictures, sequential narrative, and general familiarity, have been found beneficial for science education [34,45], communicating complex data-related concepts [69] including confidence intervals, hypothesis tests, regressions, and simple statistical graphs [47,65]. More recently, comics have been used as general format for data-driven storytelling medium [73,15], coming with specific design patterns [18].…”

You say Potato, I say Po-Data

“…Other approaches to data visualization involve sketching representations. This is often done early in the ideation phase of a visualization design project, as a low-fidelity method to develop and clarify 1 http://dataphys.org/list/mesopotamian-clay-tokens/ 2 http://dataphys.org/list/marshall-islands-stick-charts/ ideas about representation [4]. Paper is a popular medium for sketching visualizations due to its wide availability [40,10], however, visualization sketching has also occurred on whiteboards [3,39,8], tablets [31,25], and napkins [6].…”

“…The open and playful nature of stamps could have potential applications in art therapy, which relies on nonverbal communication of thoughts and feelings [26]. Stamps could help people narrate their situations or personal data visually through data comics [1] or data-based storytelling [24]. However, further exploration of the viability of visualization stamps in a therapy context needs to be done in consultation with healthcare and therapy professionals.…”