Slideshow
The slideshow ranked last in the qualitative satisfaction aspects of Sub-Test 1. It also
came second last in the qualitative satisfaction aspects of Sub-Test 2 which included the
traditional method not part of Sub-Test 1. Overall, the slideshow was ranked very poorly
by participants. However it came third out of five in the timed tests with an average time
of 48.4 seconds and so was neutral in that regard. The participant comments were very
informative regarding the difference between ranking and performance. Overall the
participants found the slide show narrative visualization to be too traditional and boring
to merit a high ranking over the others despite its performance.
"Makes you feel like you are in person's shows who has already visited the
museum. Just cannot learn a lot about the exhibit itself."
"forced user to retain information."
"very traditional, gave sense of what a user wanted to see."
"slightly boring."
"this was boring, did not care."
Traditional
The traditional method really wasn't a narrative visualization method. It was quite simply
the common method of storing pictures and information about a trip wherein all the
individual pictures and files are placed together in a folder on a computer. It was included
in the second test so the results of looking through the information could be compared
with the visualizations which seek to present the information in a different format.
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Unsurprisingly, it was ranked last in all aspects by participants by a wide margin (75-
80%). However with an average time of 19.05 seconds it performed the best out of all
the methods in the timed tasks. This is likely due to the fact that having all the pictures
and files as separate things, instead of presented in some kind of holistic manner, made it
very easy to use accelerators in the windows operating system (such as metadata and
indexing) to sort through the data. However participants didn't seem to enjoy this method
as much when it came to viewing a presentation of somebody's else's experiences and so
ranked it poorly.
7.2 Discussion
The first sub-test dealt with visiting a virtual museum, viewing exhibits and gathering
data, and constructing a visual narrative out of that data. The participants rated the
prototype overall highly in both effectiveness (avg: 5.7+/- 0.21 S.E) and operability (avg:
6.12 +/- 0.21 S.E). The second sub-test dealt with viewing the visual narratives created by
another person detailing their museum visit. The participants also rated the prototype
overall high in both effectiveness (avg: 5.65 +/- 0.21S.E).In terms of operability the
average time, in seconds, it took for the timed task was low (45.05 +/- 8.1 S.E) given the
nature of the task.
The results from both tests indicate that the participants understood how to construct a
visual narrative and the purposes of constructing one. They thought they were effective
and accurate tools for sharing one's experiences in a museum and that they improved the
museum experience.
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These operability results from both tests seem to indicate that users did not find the
simulated museum visit, and the construction process of making a narrative visualization,
to be too frustrating, complex, or lengthy. The prototype carried out its intended functions
in an easy-to-use manner that did not distract from the higher level concepts and designs
that were being tested or influence them in a negative fashion.
These results provide a positive answer to the first research question that each narrative
visualization would succeed at its theme. Participants responded positively to the
effectiveness and operability of each theme of the narrative visualizations. While they
definitely ranked some visualizations as more preferable to others, they thought that
overall the visualizations preformed well and were implemented in a way that matched
their design. They responded positively to statements regarding a summarized design
concept of each narrative visualization matching its design and implementation.
The flexibility results also support the positive answer to the first research question.
Participant response was mixed but overall positive where they responded positively to
having different narrative visualization designs to choose from and that having multiple
narrative visualizations was beneficiary. They also indicated that they wanted the
narrative visualizations to incorporate a larger number of data types (ranging from audio,
to video, to social media data). However, for the average user, 4 visualizations to choose
from was enough but they would like to have more control over the style and creation of
the narrative visualizations that they are given.
Lastly, the user comments seem to also support the success of themed visualization in
their purposes. Many users remarked on how they liked the themed nature of a narrative
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visualizations and what they found interesting about