| home page | data viz examples | critique by design | final project I | final project II | final project III |
This is Part II of my project! Here is a link to my storyboard preview that includes all of my data visualizations used: https://preview.shorthand.com/gZCihyJgqFxMF5zF
Since the story I want to detail is applicable to a larger set of people other than graduate students, I want to venture out of the university sphere to get feedback on what’s working with my storyboard and visualizations, and what’s falling short. I also think that I can be in an echo-chamber with my classmates, or that my friends could overlook things that I should change, so I wanted to ask a variety of people.
Since I want to tell a story about energy generation and consumption moving away from fossil fuels to cleaner energy like wind and solar, I want my message to be clearly understood by the audience that otherwise does not have a background in climate change or energy systems. My visualizations should not be complex: they should be clear-cut depictions of the changes in the energy mix with little room for interpretation. My presentation on shortform should not be distracting with unnecesary images or gifs clouding the simple, effective data visualizations. My interviews with users aim to identify points of confusion, points of interest in the data visualizations, and opportunities for design improvement, especially around the narrative structure. Insights from the interviews will inform the design direction for the third part of this project.
To make sure that my narrative is focused through the presentation, I want to have a wide sample of users to review my working project and let me know what messaging is not translated.
Moving forward with user research, I want to cover a wide age-range from early 20s to mid-60s. Additionally, I want to speak with working profesisonals, graduate students, and non-degree holders, as well as individuals from different socio-economic groups. I decided on this range of users because the topic of the energy flip is so encompassing: the energy transition will impact everyone in the United States, and energy policy broadly has fiscal implications that really change the economic reality for everyone– think the 1970s oil crisis and the mess that came from that! I want my messaging to land for a wider audience than just industry stakeholders who are involved in utilities or energy infrastructure. Also, since my call to action is based on advocacy and calling congressional representatives, I want my message to be digestable for people who are not usually interested in political action on a local level, but could be moved to advocate if the messaging is deemed critical. All of my participants are based in Pennsylvania, which is currently a hub for natural gas production and consumption, so I want to persuade them that a transition to cleaner energy is feasible.
The following are my participants:
During these interviews, I want to identify points of confusion that may arise regarding the narrative flow. Specifically, I want to keep the focus on data visualizations without doing much “telling”, but in my efforts to make the data speak for itself, it may interrupt the flow of the narrative that could use more context or primers for the data. I also tried to keep my shorthand within a specific dark, moody color palette to not distract from the visualizations, but I want more feedback on if the colors used in the background clash with the colors used in my visualizations.
| Goal | Questions to Ask |
|---|---|
| Narrative Development | Does the story flow smoothly between sections? |
| Narrative Development | What context do you wish you saw in the current presentation? |
| Visualization Clarity | When using the map functions, are you able to navigate the tools provided? |
| Visualization Clarity | In the Tableau visualizations, are the colors overwhelming? |
| Narrative Development | Is the call to action sufficient? Should there be more primers to the action? |
Hello [Name]! Thank you for joining me [over zoom/in person] to review my project on energy consumption and generation in the United States. During this session, I will [give you the link to my site/present the site on my laptop] for 5 minutes. In that time, you may scroll and interact with the shorthand site. After those 5 minutes, I will ask you a series of 5 questions relating to your experience interacting with my shorthand site and exploring the visualizations included. I will record your responses and key takeaways, but your personal information like name, location, or other identifying features will not be recorded.
[Send link/pull up site]
5 minutes start now.
Thank you!
| Questions | Interview 1 - 24, Student | Interview 2 - 26, Working Professional | Interview 3 - 25, Grad Student | Interview 4 - 52, Working Professional | Interview 5 - 46, Working Professional |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Does the story flow smoothly between sections? | Yes, the story is easy to follow between sections. | Yes. | Yes, but there can be more context for the first graph. I like the narrative section at the beginning, but that could use more detail. | Without context, the photos included do not add to your story. Maybe add a blurb under. | Not really, I have to read the chart titles to get more information that could be in a description. |
| What context do you wish you saw in the current presentation? | The horizontal bar graphs explaining the exponential growth of renewable usage was a bit confusing to grasp, so maybe some more explainers there would be helpful | There’s a lot of info on each graph, so it was hard to narrow down the focus. | More descriptions under the graph rather than in the graph. Clean up the graphs more, because they’re distracting right now. | The photos are the main problem for me, they don’t really add to the context at all. | I would want a blub under graphs. |
| When using the map functions, are you able to navigate the tools provided? | The map is difficult to interact with, at least on the website. | Yes, but it was very laggy and hard to move cursor. | Yes, but the slider is weird to navigate and it’s too crowded. | On my view, the map isn’t focused on the U.S., it shows the whole world and it’s hard to focus on the U.S. and I can’t move the map. | I can’t really see any other fuel sources other than coal and gas. It might be a problem with the display. |
| In the Tableau visualizations, are the colors overwhelming? | The colors work well with the background, story. | I think it’s a professional color grading. | The colors work, but the horizontal bar chart could be colored differently with fewer colors. | The colors are fine and not that distracting. | The colors are fine but maybe choose lighter colors on the map. |
| Is the call to action sufficient? Should there be more primers to the action? | I’d say so. While I don’t know if it really explains why Texas has been so open to renewables, that is probably beyond the data-centric scope of this assignment | The call to action was not persuasaive enough for me persoanlly. | Partially, but there should be more of a narrative written before hand to tie activism to the visualizations. | I don’t think the call to action works for me. I would need more narrative because it seems random. | Somewhat. I like the conclusion at the end but it could use more support. |
| Research synthesis | Anticipated changes for Part III |
|---|---|
| The map of the U.S. is currently too busy and it’s hard to use. | To mediate this, I plan on changing the slider to a “loop” effect that we saw in class. I also want to try to hide the filter details on the right side because it adds to the business. |
| I should add more narrative context to accompany the graph | In line with the last comment, I think this will make the graphs less busy. A small description can go a long way, and it will do more heavy lifting. |
| The call to action should have more of a build-up | I want to make some adjustments to the presentation, maybe change when the visualizations appear, to be after some body of text to solidify the beginning of the “call to action”. |
Overall, I agree with most everything that my interviewers mentioned. The main thing that I agree with centers around the tableau map: it’s really finnicky right now! I will need to rewatch some tutorials to clean these visualizations. I also agree that the call to action should be stronger: I’m stuck with how strong the messaging should be, since we shouldn’t create anything seen as controversial or too political in class, but I will work on some creative wording to encourage a non-partisan call to action here.
N/A
I did not use AI on this portion.