| Back to Home Page | Visualizing Debt | Critique by Design | Final Project I | Final Project II | Final Project III |
Per Part I of the project, I utilized Flourish and Infogram to create more polished dataviz, yet ultimately wireframes of my sportswashing story. After formulating the visualizations, I embeded them in Shorthand to form a storyboard to visually represent the setup (e.g. framing money in soccer and defining sportswashing), conflict (e.g. presenting the issue of sportswashing in the English Premier League), and resolution (e.g. implying future sportswashing implications and including a call to action) portions of the narrative. You can view a preview of the the wireframes and storyboards on Shorthand.
As a novice in data visualization, it is critical to seek feedback on the visual and storytelling elements. The following sub-sections will identify the target audience I want to reach, the interview script I presented, and the results of three interviews I conducted to better guide my final story presentation.
Sportswashing is a relatively niche issue not particulary affecting the American sports industry. Personally, I did not know much about sportswashing or the narrative in England despite being a diehard supporter of the league and the club Tottenham Hotspur. This means that even the most devoted sports fans in this country do not necessarily understand the topic or its nuances–unless they are well-versed in international golf, autoracing, and soccer competitions. To bridge this knowledge gap, my primary audience is American soccer fans who are unaware of sportswashing and the implications it has in eroding the communal aspects of their beloved soccer clubs. Equipped with knowledge on sportswashing, readers/viewers of the story optmistically will grow a vested interest in protecting the identities of their club and combat sportswashing interests.
To gather user feedback, I wanted to interview individuals representing a wide-spectrum of interests despite the focused target audience. Because in reality, the audience to publically-accessible material like this storyboard stumble across things that look and sound interesting in this age of information. Moreover, feedback from a more diverse group should aid in providing unique and common critiquing threads simultaneously that will help guide my revisions in the final iteration of the story. Of the three individuals I decided to interview, only one fits the target audience of American soccer fans with allegiances to the English Premier League. The other two are individuals without knowledge of sportswashing or soccer for that matter.
Unformity is key when gathering user feedback. Therefore, I decided to provide the same interivew script of three questions to the interviewees. Since the Shorthand preview of the storyboard is not text-heavy, I really wanted to center the interviews on how well the story is being depicted through the visualizations solely. I then wanted to pick the interviewees brains about the aesthetic choices I made in the storyboard (see Moodboard section below). The questions in their entirety are detailed below along with the ultimate goals of each.
| Goal | Questions to Ask |
|---|---|
| Determine if the storyboard visualizations create a clear, decisive story | How would you describe the story being told? |
| Determine if the storyboard visualizations create a clear, decisive story; Diagnose the effectiveness of the aesthetic choices | Are the graphics clear and persuasive? If not, what would you suggest doing otherwise? |
| Diagnose the effectiveness of the aesthetic choices | Does the color scheme aid in telling the story? If not, how would you change it? |
Fortunately, the storytelling elements and color scheme were successful in the eyes of the interviewees. However, there are issues that will need to be revised before the final presentation. Below, is a table documenting a general profile of each interviewee and their specific insights to the interview questions.
| Questions | Interview 1 - A 64-year-old woman who does not watch soccer |
Interview 2 - A 23-year-old college student who is an avid soccer fan |
Interview 3 - A 24-year-old college student who does not watch soccer |
|---|---|---|---|
| How would you describe the story being told? | - Story is clear in telling me about sportswashing and that it is bad in England - Call to action is a little cloudy |
- Clearly defined “sportswashing” and gave examples - Unsure about how the “Celebrity Investors in Soccer” ties into the whole story |
- Story is about money in soccer and how sportswashing is a growing issue in the sport |
| Are the graphics clear and persuasive? If not, what would you suggest doing otherwise? | - Graphics “need some changing” - Font should be bolder under heading and names of celebrities in the first infographic - Premier League revenue x-axis labels are too faint - Personal freedoms viz needs a different color than yellow as “not sure where to look” |
- Majority of visualizations effectively contributed to the author’s story and argument - “Emirati, Chinese, and Saudi Ownership Spell Potential Sportswashing Attempts in England” viz left me asking “why is this important?” - Give some more specific examples of measures taken to improve the reputation of some sporting events - Include percentage signs after the values in the “4,000 British Adults Responses in October 2021 Survey” figure - Add an apostrophe ‘s’ to Adults in the survey - Difficult to interpret the Word Cloud - Include an explanation about how the Word Cloud figure had been generated and how it fits into the context of the story |
- How does Word Cloud relate to the story? - Provide more defined context if using the Word Cloud graphic |
| Does the color scheme aid in telling the story? If not, how would you change it? | - Color scheme is “focused” and does not distract me | - Liked consistency of color scheme and it helped to “focus” on the story - Maintained adequate negative space - Web browser preview had too much movement - Organize the visualizations all centered to limit movement |
- Color scheme is “soothing” - Color washing effect is clever |
The findings from the user feedback interviews and their anticipated changes for the final project are included in the table below.
| Research synthesis | Anticipated changes for Part III |
|---|---|
| Storytelling elements are well-crafted | - Include specific insights and/or profiles of dubious actions of alleged sportswashing investors in the EPL - Provide more text for context on sportswashing and investment in sports in setup section |
| Color scheme is effective | - Exclude yellows from graphics as background of viz suffices |
| Word Cloud needs to be revisited | - Change chart type to better encapsulate the British media’s wariness over potential sportswashing takeovers |
| Web page design differs from mobile phone display on Shorthand | - Focus less on movement of graphics in web page design as feel differs from mobile version |
Many common throughlines for story revisions came in the user feedback process. For the most part, the color scheme, story, and respective visualizations were crafted effectively. Yet I should make strides towards clarity through the strategic (and sparingly) usage of text.
The Word Cloud undoubtedly needs to be revised. Through this image, I wanted to encapsulate the British media’s often adversarial affront they view with sportswashing interests making bids to own Premier League clubs. Ultimately, another dataviz will be more effective in communicating the pulse of journalists on the topic.
Although a rather underepresented topic, sportswashing does connote a certain aesthetic. Namely, the topic is depicted with palettes of reds and yellows in infographics to reflect the ghastly human rights abuses and corruption often associated with these investors. Rather than replicate this trite depiction, I decided to employ lighter, warmer color palette of yellows and greenish-blues to capture the vibrancy of sports. However, I employ a literal whitewashing of the palette as the story progresses to symbolize the erasure of the fabric of sports at the hands of sportswashing.
Due to the seriousness of the topic, I decided to use a professional looking typography and font in PT Serif.