portfolio
| home page | visualizing debt | critique by design | final project I | final project II | final project III |
Wireframes / storyboards
The data story comprises of four components (Data source is not added to these sketches. However, included in the viz in Shorthand presentation):
1. Setup: Video games are more and more popular, especially adventure games
Data Source: Popular Video Games 1980 - 2023, https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/arnabchaki/popular-video-games-1980-2023
Data Source: Popular Video Games 1980 - 2023, https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/arnabchaki/popular-video-games-1980-2023
2. Conflicts: There are big swing for popularity, popularity of adventure games falls suddenly in recent years
Data Source: Popular Video Games 1980 - 2023, https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/arnabchaki/popular-video-games-1980-2023
3. Resolution: Forecasted Video games sales stay stable, with action games leading the way
Data Source:Video Games Sales, https://data.world/learn-to-viz/martevizanaltica202307/workspace/file?filename=video_games_sales.csv
4. Call for Action: There is room for development of Shooter and Role-Play games based on video game market needs.
Data Source:Video Games Released in 2022 https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/mattop/video-games-released-in-2022
User research
Target audience
Primary users are expected to be video game developers. Game palyers may also interested to learn popular genres and trends of video games. Ideally I would like to recevie feedback for the draft of the presentation from video game developers. However, I decide to interview some friends or colleagues, or whoever is availale providing feedback due to lack of connection with the specific field.
Interview script
Objectives for the project and questions aiming the goals are listed as follows:
| Goal | Questions to Ask |
|---|---|
| Well defined user groups | Who do you think is the intended audience for this? |
| Clear outline of story | Can you describe to me what the data story telling you? |
| Appropriate data visualization | Do you think the visualizations relevant to the story? |
| Compelling story | Does the story make sense to you? |
| Effective delivery of the concept | Is there anything you find confusing? |
| User-friendly presentation | Is the layout of the visual/text easy to view? |
| Overall improvement | Is there anything you would change or do differently? |
Interview findings
I conducted interviews whith three individuals. Interviewee 1 is a male in his 40’s, self identified as a socializer. Interviewee 2 is a male in his 20’s with occasional gaming experience. Interviewee 3 is a male in his 50’s, who hasn’t played a game for decades. I summarized the resulst of the interviews and presented as the following table:
| Questions | Interview 1 (briefly describe) | Interview 2 | Interview 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who do you think is the intended audience for this? | Executives at game companies | Video game developer | General public |
| Can you describe to me what the data story telling you? | Popularity of various game genres can change dramatically over short term, and even if stable over long term. | Certain genres are likely to remain consistently popular at a consistent level, while other genres will rise and fall in popularity over years. | Action and adventure games are dominant genres |
| Do you think the visualizations relevant to the story? | Some what. The general trends are presented, but the reasons behind trends are not presented. | Yes | Yes |
| Does the story make sense to you? | No, the story is confusing—the trendlines are not consistent, difficult to follow. | Some parts. For instance, Adventure is the most popular genre | I think so, clarifying why some genres have sudden changed may help connecting the story |
| Is there anything you find confusing? | Explain some background reason or assumptions behind change in popularity of certain game genres. | why Adventure and Action are both hugely popular, then trummpet in recent years? | no |
| Do you think the layout of the visual/text easy to view? | Popular trend Viz is simple and easy to see the message | The title and subtile lines would work better as texts in presentation | Popularity and sales forecast is informative |
| Is there anything you would change or do differently? | Explain some background reason or assumptions behind change in popularity of certain game genres. | Remove title and subtile lines | Maybe insert verticle line to indicate dramatical change |
Identified changes for Part III
The key findings have been summarized into a table:
| Research synthesis | Anticipated changes for Part III |
|---|---|
| Story needs a catching title | Change the title for the data story |
| Story line needs logical connections | find out the cause of popular trend swing over time and sudden fall in 2022 |
| visualization needs improvement | Remove titles and substiles from graphs and incorporate them into plot/text |
| Presentation layout needs to be refined | Use appopriate layout for each visual based on the contents and message the visual delivers |
The feedback and suggestions I received from the three interviewees are very insightful. However, There are some limitation due to interviewees’ background. None of the three interviewees has any video game development experience. For projects of larger scale, increasing interview group with more diversified background may benefit the projects with more comprehensiven feedback.