I tried to focus on finding what was the most important goal of my previous research, "Project Syria". Soon, I realized that it was encouraging people to make sense of storytelling, because ultimate purpose of the project was deliver storytelling of "Syria Crisis" to people, in order to let them know which group is affecting generating refugees. There would be many attributes of data storytelling such as aesthetics of data visualization, usability of interface and storytelling techniques. However, I thought that most important aspect of storytelling is not one of those attributes, but letting people understand storytelling by making harmony of those attribute especially in context of journalism. This is because, data storytelling is generally driven by data analysis and visualization which require cognitive effort to understand. Therefore data visualization indicates exploratory visualization while infographic indicates explanatory visualization.
So, this was the starting point of my problem statement, because even if making sense of storytelling is important, there is not enough understanding on how people make sense of data storytelling, storytelling consist of data visualization, narrative and interactive interface. Emerging interest of specific design approaches such as 'User Experience', 'User Centered Design' for last decade have demonstrated how seeing the world by users perspective is important in design area. Using current approach, it could be possible evaluate usability or single attribute of data storytelling. However, it still hard to understand process of how people make sense of data storytelling.
This could be huge disadvantage for designers when they are designing data storytelling, because there is no coherent way to track the reason why people can not make sense of certain storytelling, then it is also impossible to reflect user's perspective to the design in order to make contents more persuasive and understandable. Therefore, I established my problem statement as the below.
- Lack of understanding on how people make sense of data storytelling
- Thus, it is hard to reflect users’ perspective on data storytelling for designers during design process.
Communicating with researchers who have similar topics
First thing that I did after establishing problem statement was finding relevant researches as many as possible. Generally, there were many researches about design method or genre of data storytelling and their trend. However, there were not many studies about how people make sense of the data storytelling. Fortunately, I could finally find most relevant research with my purpose.
One of Ph.D candidate studied almost same topic regarding standalone visualization. Therefore difference with my research is that he only researched how people make sense of single data visualization without narrative and interactive elements. Despite of the difference, his study gave me a lot of insight to conduct my own research. The below is the final outcome of his research.
I wanted to know more about his research as well as his personal opinion about my own topic. So I sent him an e-mail to ask more detail of coding process and his opinion. He replied me that due to the privacy issue, the institution allow people who only enrolled access the data, so I couldn't access more detail data. Instead, he show me some empathy of value on my research topic and give me an advice that I need to control boundary of data storytelling, because this genre is really contextual depend on way of offer storytelling.
Therefore I decided to narrow down 3 storytelling techniques , which are mostly implemented by designer, referenced by research called "Emerging and Recurring Data-Driven Storytelling Techniques: Analysis of a Curated Collection of Recent Stories"
After arranging my thought on the research with previous procedure I could set my detail research aim as the below.
- Understanding how people make sense of data storytelling
- Establishing sensemaking model of data storytelling
- Discovering possibility of new sensemaking model of data storytelling as assessment and design tool.
Main concern of outcomes
During the research methodology class, professor Jong Ho Lee gave me a feedback, my research topic is too scholarly so I need to demonstrate design outcome. This is the biggest concern of my research, because even if I believe this topic is closely related to design process of data storytelling, it could be challenge to prove the value of the research and developed to tangible outcomes. Now, I'm thinking about suggesting design/assessment tool for data storytelling which can be used by designer.
However, the way of developing design/assessment tool is not certain right now, this is the biggest the concern of the research.
Conducting Field Research
To observe and understand how people make sense of data storytelling, I decided to use qualitative approach. During the field research, I will conduct think-aloud session and semi-structure interview. Firstly, I contacted possible participant about 10 people and arrange appointment for field research. Last week I conducted test for 3people. The below screen captured image shows practice session of think aloud. A participant was asked to talk what he is looking at and what is his thought and impression or understand of the storytelling. Using usability program, all of his interaction on the screen are captured on the movie and his voice and face also recored on the movie.
After this session, I will have semi-structure interview to understand their behaviour or attitude emerged during previously more detail.
Next tasks for progressing the research
While conducting field research, I'm analysing the data transcribed from the user test by using grounded theory. Not only for the time concern, but also to find possible trial and error quickly, I will not wait analysis process until all of the field research of participants is finished.
The above is the first open coding of data from 3 participants. I will conduct the field research for 3 more people this week, so I need to compare the research and decide to weather keep this category or reorganized them, then go to next step for axial coding.
