Interactive Data Comics

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Data Visualization
• Digital Storytelling

Background:

• Data comics effectively combine sequential narration with visual and textual content for communication.
• Static data comics, while powerful, lack the dynamic capabilities for enhanced user experiences.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate methods for making data comics interactive.
• To introduce operations supporting non-linear storytelling, personalization, and reader-defined data focus in data comics.

Main Methods:

• Development of a lightweight specification language, COMICSCRIPT, for adding interactivity.
• Recruitment of six professional illustrators and designers to test the authoring process.
• Creation of example interactive data comics to showcase potential.

Main Results:

• COMICSCRIPT enables designers to add interactivity to static data comics.
• User study with professionals demonstrated the viability of the authoring process.
• Interactive data comics offer enhanced storytelling through features like branching and detail-on-demand.

Conclusions:

• Interactive data comics expand the possibilities of visual communication and storytelling.
• The proposed approach and language facilitate the creation of dynamic and engaging data narratives.
• Findings can inform the development of tools for interactive storytelling.