#SWDchallenge: get animated!
When any element in a scene, view, or image is obviously different from its neighbors, our attention is drawn to that distinctive element right away. This contrast can be across any of at least a dozen different visual qualities, including size, intensity, position, and alignment. Formally, these qualities are called preattentive attributes, and we can leverage their power when we create our visuals. By using these attributes selectively and intentionally, we can focus people’s attention on whatever specific elements we want them to zero in on.
Some preattentive attributes are stronger than others. In a static medium, color is often the single most effective one we can employ. If we don’t restrict ourselves to static visuals, however, then we can use an even more powerful attribute: motion. We can incorporate motion into our visual communications in a variety of ways, and the specific approach we take often depends on our particular goals—what are we hoping to achieve through the animation?
For example, motion can be used specifically to draw your focus on an otherwise static page. The contrast between an object in motion and a collection of objects at rest can get our attention in a way that almost nothing else can. (In an evolutionary sense, it’s logical that we are now hard-wired to notice movement; if our ancestors weren’t predisposed to notice, say, a predator stalking them, it’s unlikely that they’d have lived long enough to actually become anyone’s ancestor!) Whether it’s flashing, rotating, moving, transforming, or pulsing, any element with an animated quality is an attention magnet.
Animation can also be transitional, helping a viewer understand how things changed from State A to State B, or smoothly move all the way through to State Z. In live presentations particularly, this can be a powerful way to use motion. We refer back to Hans Rosling’s famous “200 Years in 4 Minutes” BBC presentation on a regular basis, but for good reason. It is truly a masterclass in how a gifted speaker can use animated graphics to communicate complex information.
Animation can also be responsive, providing cues to a user about how their interaction with a visualization, or an application, or a device, is changing the view they are experiencing. App developers and industrial designers alike know how important visual cues and feedback are for user experience; motion encourages us to look, to explore, to engage, to be confident that our activity was registered and acted upon.
the challenge
NEW! Our friends at Flourish have a special offer for participants in this month’s challenge. If you use Flourish to create your submission, you can get a $100 discount off a one-year Personal plan. To get your unique discount code, mail hello@flourish.studio with the subject line "I used Flourish for the SWDchallenge." Include a link to your entry on community.storytellingwithdata.com, and a link to your creation on public.flourish.studio. That’s it!
Whatever interpretation of “animation” you choose, March is your opportunity to show how motion can help an audience make sense of a visualization; ideally, one that would be more difficult to understand or fully appreciate in a static form. Use any dataset you like (this list of publicly available data sources is a fine place to start, as is Jeremy Singer-Vine’s curated list of data sources from his weekly Data is Plural newsletter).
Share your creation in the SWD community by March 31st at 4PM PT. You can upload an animated GIF to the community if that helps to convey the animated quality of your submission. Otherwise, submit a representative static image as well as a description of your chosen style of animation, and then include a link to the best place for everyone to see your creation in all of its intended glory. If there is any specific feedback or input that you would find helpful, include that detail in your commentary.
related resources
Today, there are a variety of tools that can help you create animated visuals with your data.
At storytelling with data, we use Excel and PowerPoint to animate transitions when we are illustrating makeovers or storytelling in a live business setting. It is a powerful technique for focusing audience attention on specific elements of your visual while leading them through a set narrative.
As of the most recent version of Tableau (2020.1), creators can animate elements in their visualizations. Even though the functionality is new, there are already instructional articles and videos online (both on the Tableau blog and from independent practitioners like Tim Ngwena, Marc Reid, and Bona Wang), demonstrating how you can apply animation to sorting, filtering, aggregation and disaggregation of fields, and stepping through time series.
Flourish, a web-based data visualization tool, also enables chartmakers to leverage animation in a variety of ways. Their library of chart templates allows you to easily create racing bar and line charts, transitional scatter plots à la Hans Rosling, responsive survey data exploration or impressive pan-and-zoom 3D map showpieces—without coding. Using their "stories" capability, you can also connect different visualizations to a unique storytelling experience, and animate smoothly both within and across different chart types.
This is not a comprehensive list, and we encourage you to use whatever software or code you are most comfortable with. The tool is up to you. The data is up to you. The interpretation of “animation” is up to you! We just want to see what you can do when you’re no longer constrained to working in a static environment.
