Communicating with Motion: A Design Space for Animated Visual Narratives in Data Videos

TLDR

Data videos combine data visualization and motion graphics to tell stories, yet systematic reviews of their design are scarce despite growing popularity. This study introduces a design space for animated visual narratives in data videos. The design space merges animation techniques used for data communication with visual narrative strategies, derived from an analysis of 82 high‑quality data videos and validated in a workshop with 20 participants. Feedback from the workshop indicated that the design space is inspirational and useful for designing and creating data videos.

Abstract

Data videos are a genre of narrative visualization that communicates stories by combining data visualization and motion graphics. While data videos are increasingly gaining popularity, few systematic reviews or structured analyses exist for their design. In this work, we introduce a design space for animated visual narratives in data videos. The design space combines a dimension for animation techniques that are frequently used to facilitate data communication with one for visual narrative strategies served by such animation techniques to support story presentation. We derived our design space from the analysis of 82 high-quality data videos collected from online sources. We conducted a workshop with 20 participants to evaluate the effectiveness of our design space. Qualitative and quantitative feedback suggested that our design space is inspirational and useful for designing and creating data videos.