A Storytelling Experiment

I need two minutes of your time. By clicking on the following link, you will be taken to one of several slightly different versions of a visual story about the development of the gross domestic product (GDP) in different countries. Watch it, play with it, and if you like it: share it. You will help us understand which types of storytelling work and which don't. There is no annoying survey, just a little story.

This is as much an experiment in running experiments as it is an experiment on storytelling: we're measuring the effectiveness of the different versions by tracking how often they are shared. Since we want to explore the real-world response of real people, we can't force them to sit down in front of a computer in a lab and act naturally. So instead, we want to watch how things get shared organically based on their merits.

Two minutes is all it takes. Participate in our storytelling experiment here.

Posted by Robert Kosara on March 7, 2012.

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Comments

jakob says…

I enjoyed the reasoning, once I did understand what you were trying to convey. I think it's quite clever.

However, having fiddled with it, I think that the reason I did not get the story at first (loaded the graphic in a background tab!) was a problem of interface design that could use some improvement to help me find the story and the interaction paradigm. It took a lot of try and error to find when and where my inputs register. At first I thought I was seeing an animated .gif, not an interactive visualization.

I realize that creating a slick interface totally escalates the workload and I don't know enough about time or budget constraints to even know whether that is feasible, yet I believe that with existing authoring tools it is quite possible to replicate the infographic presented here in an updated interface within a few hours, give or take. Once the framework is done pouring in new data in the same narrative structure would then be a matter of drag and drop.

MTW says…

Hi - honestly, I did not become excited.

1. I want scale labels that are informative, clear and annotated, so that we are in the right context. Why did the author pick the historical starting point...was it arbitrary or was it meant to reflect pre/post industrial revolution (a very Western-centric concept that may not be helpful when looking broadly, geographically)? And the vertical axis - am I looking at GDP growth? I'm assuming its YOY.
2. I want to understand the why of what the author is trying to show. The only discernible headline that speaks to this is the annotation of data points - the last one that reads...'is China set to overtake?'
3. I want to be compelled by the information. I become compelled when there is a hypothesis presented in the headline and an exhaustive challenge of the information through the visualization. If GDP growth is a measure of dominance (and what is dominance, anyway?) then there are plenty of smaller countries who have high volatility in their GDPs. This will create social, political and economic volatility within their borders, but it is not a measure of global dominance.

4. I want to be intrigued, challenged or surprised by the information. This happens the most when I am presented with 'in spite of' types of competing factors. For example, a country with explosive GDP in spite of lack of technological investment, human resources, or social unrest.

MTW

Paresh Shah says…

I like the graphic at a conceptual level. The aspect I really like is the "self paced" visualization.

There are a number of presentations/display where the viewer has no control. Here the viewer can ponder over some aspect as long as he likes and then move along.

Tony Holmes says…

Left me with more questions than answers e.g. what was the source of the data, how did you deal with Germany having been split for 40-odd years, what would a comparison of GDP per capita look like, etc. etc

Lee says…

I was more interested in the experiment than the graphic and would have preferred to see all the various approaches and then decide which one I like best. I'm not convinced that measuring 'likes' is a useful metric for effectiveness.

Konstantin Varik says…

Robert, hello! It is great idea and great experiment. Now I create an infographic project, part of which used similar methods of storytelling (graph+labels+animation): http://daybyday.gaidarfund.ru/start Could you share the results of your experiments? This is not the secret? %-)