Data Stories

In collaboration with Open Cities Lab

Design Brief
Design a way to tell a human story of the city that incorporates experiential data and quantitative data.

Design Phase 3
Evaluating the use of objects to narrate sensory and coherent stories.

Designers
Lyu Min, Aria, Yuning, Heng, Riya, Malaika, Ananya Manish

Research Methodologies
Directed storytelling, Interviews, AEIOU, Data physicalisation, Human Search Engine

Key words
Lived Stories, Data Gaps, Perception of Time

Iterating ways to narrate and experience stories

Storytelling is a way to pass on knowledge and experience about where we come from, our past mistakes, and the future directions we will take. Stories help us to understand ourselves better and make better choices when facing a similar situation.

In our research on designing effective storytelling methods, we were inspired by the early ancestors of modern museums: the "Cabinet of Curiosities" or "Wunderkammer." These cabinets housed and exhibited a diverse range of objects and artifacts, often rare and eclectic, to tell a particular story about the world and its history.

Objects have long been used to narrate the past, explore the everyday, and envision possible futures. Mundane, everyday objects, despite their ubiquity, carry symbolic layers of importance that are often overlooked. We shape these objects, and in turn, they shape our habits, routines, perspectives, and sense of self (Verbeek, 2005). However, we frequently fail to recognize the significant impact these objects have on our lives.

As a design intervention we wanted to look at the ways we can build stories through objects.

What is in your bag - Human search engine

To delve deeper into this concept, we designed a "human search engine" exercise. We asked people what they would carry in their bags if they needed to wait in the hospital as patients and why. Participants were provided with black paper and sketch pens to draw the objects. This research was conducted using convenient sampling in the student canteen area at the London College of Communication (LCC).

Participants drew items such as fidget toys, comfort dolls, chargers, power banks, crochet materials, and snack boxes. Observing the deep relationship between personal narratives, memories, and everyday objects was fascinating.

To explore this idea further we wanted to examine if we as designers could transform objects into new artefacts based on the personal narratives we have collected.

Object Narratives: Storytelling through Objects

By using everyday objects to narrate our stories we hoped to create tangible representations of individual stories, making the abstract more concrete and accessible. We decided to focus on how different objects (singular) can tell different stories as well as how a collection of objects (multiple) can tell stories. We also used re-designed object labels to convey waiting time and indicate the purpose of that object in the story.

Narrating stories using interview recordings

To add more context and interaction to our collection of objects narrating stories, we decided to incorporate bits of interview recordings with actual patients from the A&E department. Rather than playing these recordings over a speaker, we chose to use an old telephone with a small speaker attached. This setup aimed to make participants feel as though they were privy to an intimate, private conversation, enhancing the sense of connection and authenticity. Additionally, we included a logbook, allowing participants to choose and switch between different stories.

Using convenient sampling we tested our first iteration. We also invited Ayanda, the product owner of Open Cities Lab as a participant.

Insights from User testing

Using objects for storytelling not only honors personal experiences but also offers a unique and engaging method for conveying complex narratives through design.
The interactive element of incorporating interview recordings as phone calls enriched the storytelling experience, providing a more personalized and engaging way for participants to explore the narratives.
However, more work is needed on the layout to create a more intuitive experience. The current setup resembles a museum of A&E, which participants want to observe and not interact with.
Additionally, although the labels added valuable context, they often went unnoticed and require further refinement to draw more attention.
The stories talk about the patients, though participants expressed a desire to hear from the NHS staff.

Exploring Multiple Facets of the Story

We interviewed an A&E nurse and an A&E doctor through snowball sampling and directed storytelling, asking them to recount a particularly memorable day in the emergency department.

Story of the Nurse

“About that night - can’t remember what time of the year it was - summer, winter? I remember the types of patients that night, yeah: A confused gentleman with infection; An old lady, over 80 with difficulty breathing because of chest infection.”

“Monitoring vitals, administering medicine, reassuring patients, comfort and safety, and making notes, getting cups of tea”

“You don’t have enough hands, you come out of the room, make some notes and get out”

“Sense of c’mon let’s go, let’s go, it never stops”

“When you are really stressed you can’t care, but it is important for me to understand and comfort every patient”

Prototype 1

We created an interactive prototype to narrate the nurse's story over an 8-hour night shift in the A&E, incorporating objects she used that day. A fast red blinking light represented the passage of time from the nurse's perspective, and a phone played an edited version of Sophia's interview. These elements were combined to create a cohesive sensory experience.

Prior to presenting in class, we conducted our first user test. Common observations included:

The need for a more intuitive method for picking up the phone and pulling out the tickets.
The setup was so well-organized that it failed to convey the overall sense of chaos she experiences.

Story of the Doctor

“I have been working for 10 years and it has definitely gotten worse.”

“If there's not anyone particularly sick, just start like, you know, working through the queue.”

“People are already on a four hour wait and it's 10:00 PM and it's only gonna get worse overnight.”

“I try and say thank you for waiting rather than sorry about the wait, because it's not actually my fault that there's been a long wait and and it reframes it to say thank you for their time and hopefully it makes it more positive.”

“We have to run the A and E department from the corridor, we can't examine patients properly, a patient started having a seizure in the corridor and we had to treat them in a storage cupboard. This is really unsatisfactory as a doctor as you want to do best for your patient.”

“We are quite understaffed, the system really needs some changing”

Prototype 1

Taking into account the feedback from the previous prototype, we redesigned the doctor's version to be more intuitive, focusing on the micro-emotions in her story. We highlighted a specific interaction where the doctor treated a patient with depression, prescribing Lorazepam. Noticing the patient’s Bullet for My Valentine t-shirt, and knowing the band herself, the doctor spent 30 minutes talking to her about it. Despite her busy schedule, she made the patient her priority, providing a calm and empathetic presence.

References

Peng, Q. (2017). Storytelling Tools in Support of User Experience Design. Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems. [online] doi:https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3027121.

Dunne, A. and Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything : Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. Erscheinungsort Nicht Ermittelbar: Mit Press.

Tan, Z., & Hertz, G. (2019). Transforming Shoes: Storytelling Through Artifacts and Design as Narrative. doi:10.35010/ecuad:15109

Lee Roy Beach and Wise, J.A. (2022). The Theory of Narrative Thought. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Norman, D.A. (2004). Emotional design : why we love (or hate) everyday things. New York: Basic Books.

Forni, S. (2016). Narrating objects, collecting stories. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 23(6), pp.604–605. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2016.1274673.

Mager, C. and Matthey, L. (2015). Tales of the City. Storytelling as a contemporary tool of urban planning and design. Articulo, (Special issue 7). doi:https://doi.org/10.4000/articulo.2779.

The Blueprints