telling-stories-with-data-portfolio

home page visualizing debt critique by design final project I final project II final project III

Wireframes / storyboards

Shorthand Link

User research

My target audiences are other CMU graduate studesnts, but it can be generalized into young people working in United States. The following is the persona I made for my target audience: (All descriptions were initially written by me and refined using ChatGPT.)
image

Interview script

Goal#1: Ensure Contents are Self-explained and the Stroy is Compelling

  1. What do you think the story is trying to tell?
  2. Do you feel motivated after reading this story?
  3. Do graphs included help you understand the content?
  4. Do you feel the arguments make sense?

Goal#2: Improve Graphics

  1. Do you feel I need to use a different colorfor my graphs? How about different graph types?
  2. Are these graphs easy to understand?

Interview findings

Interviewee#1: Roommate (finding a job)
Interviewee#2: Girlfriend (work for 2 years)
Interviewee#3: CMU student from the same cohort

What do you think the story is trying to tell?

Interviewee#1: Save money?
Interviewee#2: Encourage students to invest and tell them it is not hard.
Interviewee#3: We should invest now.

Do you feel motivated after reading this story?

Interviewee#1: No, because I don’t have $3000.
Interviewee#2: Yes, the unemployment part drove my attention.
Interviewee#3: Yes, I feel this is related to my life.

Do graphs included help you understand the content?

Interviewee#1: Yes, your graphs are simple (most of them are lines.)
Interviewee#2: Most of the graphs cannot explain themselves. For example, there is a graph talking about employment rate in United States. It took me a fwe seconds to see what the whole graph looks like. Also, you did not add currancy unit in the table.
Interviewee#3: Yes, I like the employment rate graph that focuses on different parts, making it easy to understand.

Do you feel the arguments make sense?

Interviewee#1: Yes, I feel persuaded to save money.
Interviewee#2: Do you want to emphasize on saving or investment? Is the purpose for safety profits? You talked about a cost structure that is not resilient, and 3 types of investments, but you only mentioned about saving at end.
Interviewee#3: Yes, I like the employment rate graph that focuses on different parts, making it easy to understand.

Goal#2: Improve Graphics

Do you feel I need to use a different colorfor my graphs? How about different graph types?

Interviewee#1: Grahs need a larger font as well as your article. They are not visible. Also, you might want to remove references in the graph. They are written in blue and are distractive.
Interviewee#2: N/A
Interviewee#3: Nope, these are simple graphs, I do not feel you need to use other colorful colors in the case, considering you are talking about a serious topic.

Are these graphs easy to understand?

Interviewee#1: You might want to add more pictures in your story. I only saw a few graphs of lines.
Interviewee#2: Same as above, they are not self-explained.
Interviewee#3: Yes. I do not have much to say.

Summary

My interview questions were too broad. I could get better feedback if I asked more specific questions. One example was interviewee#3 suggested me to talk more details about the difference between three types of investments, but this does not fit into any question above.

Identified changes for Part III

  1. Give more examples to show importantce of investments
    The rael example only shows spending too much is vulnerable to changes, but not everyone spend their money like that. Adding two examples talking about food price and house price that are closer to life.

  2. Talk more about the difference between investment types
    Interviewee#3 gave me a good suggestion to show how much difference will be made in terms of 100 dollars if the audience chooses different investment types. For example, -7$ for doing nothing, -2$ for savings, and 10$ for stocks.

  3. Readability adjustments
    Make all fonts in graphs and story larger.

  4. Add more descriptions in transition
    For transition parts, such as “start investments now,” add more description to show some details about what could be done besides just giving a title.