Interactive Visualizations of Plot in Fiction (original) (raw)
Related papers
This paper describes the design and evaluation of a branching comic to compare how readers recall a visual narrative when presented as an interactive, digital program, or as a linear sequence on paper. The layout of the comic is used to visualize this data as heat maps and explore patterns of users' recollections. We describe the theoretical justification for this based upon previous work in narrative visualizations, interactive stories and comics. Having tested the comic with school boys aged 11-12; we saw patterns in the data that complement other research in both interactive stories and visualizations. We argue that the heat maps helped identify these patterns, which have implications for future designs and analyses of interactive visual and/or narrative media.
Stories have long been used to convey information, cul-tural values, and experiences. Narratives not only have been the main way people make sense of the world, but also have been the easiest way humans found out to share com-plex information. However, today we are confronted with the problem of the amount of information available, which sometimes is hard to cope with. Combining storytelling with visualization has been pointed out as an efficient method to represent and make sense of data, at the same time allowing people to relate with the information. In this paper, we explore the benefits of adding story-telling to visualizations. Drawing on case studies from news media to visualization research websites, we identified possible strategies to introduce storytelling in visualiza-tions such as adding short stories or narrative elements using annotations and using time to introduce the feeling of storytelling or story-flow.
How to Tell Stories Using Visualization
The benefits of storytelling's are long-known and its po-tential to simplify concepts, create emotional connection, and capacity to help retain information has been explored in different areas, such as journalism, education, and others. The necessity to incorporate storytelling in visualizations arises from the need to share complex data in a way that is engaging. Advances in technology have enabled us to go beyond the traditional forms of storytelling and represent-ing data, giving us more attractive and sophisticated means to tell stories. In this paper, we present the results of a focus group study that was conducted with the purpose of collecting in-formation on the narrative elements in a collection of visual-izations and the possible inclusion of storytelling elements in those. In this study information about the visualizations in terms of comprehension, navigation, and likability was also collected with the intent of identifying elements that are appealing in the visualizations. Furthermore, we suggest strategies for storytelling in visualizations.
Narrelations - Visualizing Narrative Levels and their Correlations with Temporal Phenomena
Digit. Humanit. Q., 2019
We present findings from interdisciplinary research at the intersection between literary studies, information visualization, and interface design. Despite a growing interest in text visualization among literary scholars, so far, narrative visualizations are not designed to support the particular tasks involved in narratological analysis and often fail to reveal nuanced narratological features. One major outcome of our iterative research and design process is Narrelations, a novel visualization technique specifically suited for analyzing and interpreting narrative levels of a story and temporal aspects of its narrative representation. The visualization provides an overview of the nesting and distribution of narrative levels, integrates the representation of temporal phenomena, and facilitates the examination of correlations between these aspects. With this research we explore how collaboratively designed visual encodings and interaction techniques may allow for an insightful analysis...
Cinematic Techniques in Narrative Visualization
2023
The many genres of narrative visualization (e.g. data comics, data videos) each offer a unique set of affordances and constraints. To better understand a genre that we call cinematic visualizations-3D visualizations that make highly deliberate use of a camera to convey a narrative-we gathered 50 examples and analyzed their traditional cinematic aspects to identify the benefits and limitations of the form. While the cinematic visualization approach can violate traditional rules of visualization, we find that through careful control of the camera, cinematic visualizations enable immersion in data-driven, anthropocentric environments, and can naturally incorporate insitu narrators, concrete scales, and visual analogies. Our analysis guides our design of a series of cinematic visualizations, created for NASA's Earth Science Communications team. We present one as a case study to convey design guidelines covering cinematography, lighting, set design, and sound, and discuss challenges in creating cinematic visualizations.
Once Upon a Time in a Land Far Away: Guidelines for Spatio-Temporal Narrative Visualization
Creating a visualization that conveys a narrative requires choosing the dimensions and features that help tell the story. Time and space are two of these storytelling attributes which are commonly present in the story's structure. Thus, these should be considered in the creation process. Narrative Visualiza-tion is still a new field in Information Visualization research, and while there are guidelines for designing visualizations, specific ones for this new area are still lacking. Therefore, supported by previous research on broad recommendations for designing visualizations, we propose a specific set of guidelines to structure effective visual narratives divided into four decision categories: Intent, Spatio-temporal, Interaction, and Narrative Elements.
What we ‘see’ when we read: Visualization and vividness in reading fictional narratives
Cortex, 2017
Visualization is defined as the production of mental images in the process of reading (Esrock 2005: 633). This article is concerned with varieties of visualization during an absorbing reading of a fictional narrative, the mental images that range from an indistinct and largely automatic default visualization to the much more vivid images that occur at significant stages in the narrative. Neuroscientific studies of vision have collected a large and impressively varied body of experimental evidence for two major processing streams e the dorsal and the ventral-specialized for vision-for-action and vision for-perception respectively. Further experiments distinguish different dispositional specializations: visualizers with a high spatial visualizing ability demonstrating a more efficient use of resources in the dorsal pathway, and those with a high object visualization and more efficient use of the ventral pathway (Kozhevnikov et al., 2010: 29). We can assume that both types of mental processing will be prompted in fictional narratives with differences in prominence depending on their authors' inclinations and the design and purpose of the narrative text. According to Amedeo D'Angiulli (2013: 7), who conducted elaborate tests of vividness in mental imagery using written descriptive passages as stimulus, dynamic imagery was significantly less vivid than static imagery. These results confirm traditional literary criticism based on introspection which argues that detailed description of static objects elicits an especially lively imagination. However, narratives can provoke even stronger visualizations by rendering subjective moments of seeing in which a fictional character is emotionally involved. In encouraging readers to shift now and then from the default mode of motion-oriented visualizing to a more affective and more conscious object visualization, literary fictions exercise their power to evoke imaginings that one would not generate by oneself. This may indicate that literary narratives can prove a training ground for expanding one's visualizing capacities.
Infographic: The Three Dimensions of Fiction
University of Greifswald, 2023
Grouping pieces of fiction according to various differentiating criteria and ascribing generic names to the result is a taxonomic task that has its counterpart in biology in classifying species. This visual essay is about literary families (not genres) such as ‘science fiction’ or ‘historical fiction.’ I developed three appropriate criteria for positioning a narrative in the ‘mental’ space of written fiction. The infographic is preliminary in the sense that the solution to the research question is a work in progress; however, as a graphic, it is a finalised and published object (by Greifswald University Library, see https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:gbv:9-oa-000021-2).
2010
We describe the design of several new forms of interactive 3D visualizations, to be used in teaching the concept of plot in fiction. Conventional approaches to teaching plot tend to rely on a Victorian visualization known as Freytag's Pyramid, which is well suited to a certain range of material but is not appropriate for all fiction currently being taught. Our new visualizations have the potential to allow teachers and students to explore different approaches to understanding plot. We focus in particular on three visual strategies, each of which describes significant features such as characters, objects, events, and transitions in space and time, while respectively emphasizing recurring elements in a primarily sequential structure, complexity of structure, and centrality of some designated feature or features. The technical aspects of the visualizations emerge from the availability of digital text that can be encoded for plot elements using XML.