Wireframes / storyboards

Here is the link to my Shorthand preview! Protect Your Residents

User research

Target audience

Originally, I thought my target audience would be residents of frontline communites near steel manufacturing facilities. My goal was to inform residents of the harms that their community faces because of steel production. If residents felt informed, they could call on their elected officials to impose stricter standards and regulations to protect the health and safety of residents and the environment. After the in-class critique session, I realized that this audience was too wide and would require a very broad presentation of information and data.

I then decided that my target audience would be policymakers in the regions that have steel manufacturing facilites. This includes would likely include county executives, county health departments, city councils, and city mayors. My idea was that with the information on health risks and environmental harms, policymakers will feel motivated to protect their residents by setting standards and strict regulations for steel manufacturing facilities. The storyboard should give policymakers a data informed reason to want to protect residents from further harm from the steel industry.

Interview script

My goals from the interview process is to see if my ideas and wireframe for my storyboard are easy to understand and flow well together. The aspect that I struggled with the most when putting together my storyboard was trying to find a way to make my data work together to tell the larger story in a clear and cohesive way. I also wanted to gain insight into aspects to change that would make my story more engaging to new audiences as the topic of the steel industry is not one that is commonly understood.

Goal	Questions to Ask
To see if my storyboard flows well togther	Does the current order of the storyboard make sense to you? Does the overall story flow well? If not, what would you do to change that?
To see if the concepts are easy to understand	Does each data vizualization make sense? Is the information I am providing clear to you?
To see if my story is engaging to an audience that is not familiar with the topic	What could make the story more interesting? Does the story feel too niche?
To think about the policymaker perspective	If you were a policymaker, what information is would be missing for you?

Interview findings

I conducted three interviews. Two interviews were with Heinz College students in the Telling Stories with Data class and the third interview was with a Heinz College Student that interned with a Utility Company this summer.

Questions	Heinz Student 1	Heinz Student 2	Utility Company Intern
What would you change to make it flow better?	They recommended adding a hook that is some form of a personal narrative to grab the attention of the audience. They recommended this because my story is very information heavy, so something attention grabbing at the beginning would be useful.	They recommended I rely less on images and focus more on making data visualizations to represent the image or video that I was trying to show. The argument was that this would tell the story better and make the message more clear.	They recommend that I use one chart type throughout instead of different charts. They said one chart type would be more uniform and make the story less choppy.
what information would make the story clearer?	They recommended that I add a stronger emphasis on the top three or four health risks that are associated with steel production and use repetition of these three or four health risks to drive the point home. The way it was described seemed almost like using buzzwords or a slogan.	They described my topic as niche, so they recommended that I add quotes or some sort of personal narrative to make it more engaging to the audience.	They recommended adding more context as to why the sale of US Steel to Nippon Steel is important in this story and why it brings a call to action.
Does it make more sense to have the audience be residents or policymakers?	They recommended that the audience be policymakers istead of residents because while my story is informative to residents, residents might not understand how to advocate for themselves and that information is not included.	They recommended that the target audience be policymakers because it skips the middle man and doesn’t put a further burden on the residents. Instead you’re telling the story straight to the source of change.	They recommended the target audience be policymakers because it is likely that residents of frontline communities already know the health risks that they are experiencing due to steel production. They don’t need to hear the story of it because it is THEIR story.

Identified changes for Part III

After the interviews, I noticed a few commonalities in the responses I was getting. Below is the synthesized research results and the changes I plan to make because of them.

Research synthesis	Anticipated changes for Part III
The need for a personal narrative and/or questions	I plan to add either a personal story from myself (growing up in Cleveland) or the story of the CCW explostion that happened in August. I may try to incorporate both. I will either do this as the hook to my story to grab the attention of the audience or I will put it before the call to action as final effort to draw on emotion.
The target audience does not need to be residents	I will definitely be changing the structure of my story to reflect policymakers as my target audience. After going through the interview process, this became so much more clear as the right choice.
Expanding the range of data visualizations	Previously I was focuing my data visualizations on the health risks to show the differences in frequency around the country, but after the interviews, I think it would be useful to include visualizations about the environmental harms as well because it will help complete the story. Human health and environmental health are interconnected!
Adding more emphasis to the top three health risks assoicated with steel production	I am going to add some sort of data visualization that highlights the top three health risks (maybe a tree map), so that there is a clear emphasis. I am also going to have seperate visualization for reach health risk.
Data visualization type	My idea was to use different data visualization types for my data to have my story be more interesting. I recieved a recommendation that using a set visualization type, like line graphs, would help the story flow better. I may make this change.

References

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AI acknowledgements

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