A Design Space for Applying the Freytag's Pyramid Structure to Data Stories

Abstract

Data stories integrate compelling visual content to communicate data insights in the form of narratives. The narrative structure of a data story serves as the backbone that determines its expressiveness, and it can largely influence how audiences perceive the insights. Freytag's Pyramid is a classic narrative structure that has been widely used in film and literature. While there are continuous recommendations and discussions about applying Freytag's Pyramid to data stories, little systematic and practical guidance is available on how to use Freytag's Pyramid for creating structured data stories. To bridge this gap, we examined how existing practices apply Freytag's Pyramid by analyzing stories extracted from 103 data videos. Based on our findings, we proposed a design space of narrative patterns, data flows, and visual communications to provide practical guidance on achieving narrative intents, organizing data facts, and selecting visual design techniques through story creation. We evaluated the proposed design space through a workshop with 25 participants. Results show that our design space provides a clear framework for rapid storyboarding of data stories with Freytag's Pyramid.