Authoring logically sequenced visual data stories with Gravity

Abstract

Abstract Visual data stories have been shown to significantly aid the comprehension and short-term memorability of statistical facts and value messages. Hence, they are a promising medium for communicating complex information to a target audience, fulfilling the communicative goal of information visualisation. However, creating visual data stories often requires a plethora of tools to execute the visual data story creation process – creating visualisations, developing a logical connection between visualisations, and presenting the story based on the meaningfully sequenced visualisations. Current information visualisation tools either focus primarily on exploration or lack sequencing models for visualisation presentation, even though transitioning and sequencing have been shown to affect user understanding and interpretation of visualisations. We present Gravity, a system that consolidates the different phases of the visual data story creation process, and recommends and visualises logically sequenced sets of interactive visualisations to support the presentation of coherent narratives and visual data stories. We also report on an evaluation study with representative participants. Our results show that participants learned to use the system within a short time and successfully created visual data stories with minimal guidance.