In today’s data-driven world, the ability to explore and communicate complex data insights effectively has become increasingly crucial. Data analysts are required not only to extract valuable insights from complex data but also to present data stories efficiently that cater to different needs, ultimately fostering informed decision-making. While narrative elements are indispensable for creating a compelling and engaging story, their impact can be amplified by incorporating them into the data analysis and presentation processes.

The thesis harnesses the concepts of the narrative elements (such as plot, theme, point of view, and dialogue) and contributes new models and interaction designs that power interactive visualization systems for data exploration and communication. Specifically, th...[ Read more ]

In today’s data-driven world, the ability to explore and communicate complex data insights effectively has become increasingly crucial. Data analysts are required not only to extract valuable insights from complex data but also to present data stories efficiently that cater to different needs, ultimately fostering informed decision-making. While narrative elements are indispensable for creating a compelling and engaging story, their impact can be amplified by incorporating them into the data analysis and presentation processes.

The thesis harnesses the concepts of the narrative elements (such as plot, theme, point of view, and dialogue) and contributes new models and interaction designs that power interactive visualization systems for data exploration and communication. Specifically, the thesis introduces semi-automatic data tours inspired by the narrative structure and presents NetworkNarratives to aid the exploration of complex network data. With NetworkNarratives, an analyst can freely explore the network and specify nodes, links, or subgraphs as seed elements for follow-up tours. For data communication, the thesis investigates different narrative purposes for a set of adaptive camera shots and proposes GeoCamera that allows users to flexibly design camera movements for geographic visualizations. GeoCamera aims to lower the barrier of crafting diverse camera movements for geographic data videos. VisNarrator is a human-machine collaborative system with a natural language interface to simplify the process of authoring network data stories. By leveraging the concept of dialogue in narrative elements, VisNarrator contains an interactive recommendation pipeline between the user and the system, enabling users to progressively construct visual data stories with the visualization recommendation and user feedback loop.

By incorporating different narrative elements into data analysis and data story creation, this thesis seeks to improve the efficiency of exploring and communicating complex data. We have conducted various evaluations, including case studies and user studies, to demonstrate the usability and utility of the integration for data exploration and communication. The role of narrative elements explored and the design considerations distilled from the interactive systems could shed light on novel techniques for bridging the gap between raw data and human understanding.