The Visual Data Storytelling contest celebrates its 8th
year in 2024. This contest aims to encourage students, researchers, and visualization practitioners to
demonstrate the value of data visualization through compelling visual data stories.
This contest celebrates the emerging data communication genre, including data storytelling, narrative
visualizations, explanatory notebooks, and visual essays. The contest will be held in conjunction with
IEEE PacificVis 2024 from April
23-26, 2024 at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan.
Potential contest entrants are encouraged to review the following events and venues for inspiration:
Entries from previous contests:
Talks about data-driven storytelling:
PacificVis is a unified visualization symposium welcoming all areas of visualization, such as
information, scientific, graph, security,
and software visualization. Storytellers are invited to submit visual data-driven stories that draw upon
any of these areas.
In addition, entries that focus on computational journalism and artistic design projects are encouraged.
Unlike contests such as the IEEE VAST
challenge or
the IEEE SciVis Contest,
the data for the
PacificVis visual data storytelling contest
is intentionally left unspecified; storytellers are free to choose any publicly available dataset(s).
Similarly, the task that storytellers are to accomplish is to successfully communicate a message or
series of messages
(i.e., a narrative, a series of insights) using data visualization techniques. The story's themes can
draw from any topic,
including current affairs, history, natural disasters, and research findings from the sciences and
humanities.
Entries may be submitted by teams or individuals from industry and academia. Conference sponsors can
participate non-competitively. Submissions must fulfill the requirements explained below.
Submissions can take several forms:
- Images: A collection of images, charts, infographics, data comics, and/or data visualization
that convey a story using
engaging visual designs. Example 1 and
Example 2.
- Video: An animation that tells a data-driven story using visualizations. Note that video
submissions that appear to be
tutorials or demonstrations of a visualization tool will not be considered; the focus of the
submission must be a visual narrative
about the data, not a visualization tool or technique. Example.
- Notebooks: Interactive articles, markups, and notebooks that guide the reader through a
narrative using text and visualizations.
Examples of explainable notebook platforms include Distill,
Idyll, and Observable.
- Website: An interactive web page that guides the user through the story. Note that purely
analytic or exploratory
visualization tools/dashboards that do not provide guidance or storytelling to the user will not be
considered.
The winning entry in the 2017 contest is an excellent example of a website entry:
Example.
- Unconventional Forms: Other forms of interactive storytelling work, such as virtual/augmented
reality, mixed reality,
and other audio-visual projects, are also encouraged to submit as well. A video is likely the best
way to make the initial submission.
For unconventional entries that are accepted, we will work with the artists/authors to decide the
best possible way to exhibit the work
at the conference.
Other requirements:
- The story must feature a visual representation of data generated by various techniques such as
computer programming (e.g., D3.js),
manual illustration (e.g., using pen & paper, physical objects, or illustration software), or other
relevant techniques.
Third-party techniques or applications may be used in conjunction with the author's own work as long
as proper credit is given to their
respective creators and it is made clear which aspects of the implementation represent the authors'
own work.
- The entries must be original data-driven stories that have not been previously published elsewhere.
- The dataset(s) used in the story must be publicly available, and linked to, sourced, or otherwise
referenced.
- The story content can be in any language, while accompanying explanations should be provided in
English. This will help our judges
provide a proper evaluation of your submission.
- A 150-word abstract (entered on the PCS submission website) that may briefly describe the purpose of
the story along with the data
analysis and design process undertaken by the storyteller(s). The abstract should not include the
message(s) communicated by the story;
the story must stand alone in this regard such that a viewer should not need to read the abstract to
understand the story.
- Supplementary materials are encouraged. For example, high-resolution images, videos, audio files, or
other materials to show design
processes that will help reviewers evaluate the submission.
-
For the accepted entries, we expect the following additional requirements:
- A brief demo video describing the submission. (Exact details will be sent out to accepted
entries.)
Submission
Submit online through the new Precision Conference System
at the
PacificVis 2024 Storytelling Contest track.
- Static entries such as infographics and data comics should be submitted in PDF format.
- Videos should be in mp4 format, with a maximum file size of 300 MB.
- Explainable articles and websites can be submitted as a web URL.
Such entries should be directly runnable in a browser without downloading or
installing packages/libraries/etc.
If you have chosen to submit a URL (i.e., a website submission or an online version of your video or
image submission),
please add the URL in the abstract field.
Reviewing and Awards
A jury of visualization and data storytelling experts will carefully judge each submission and make
the
selection of accepted entries.
Successful entries will effectively communicate a narrative, message(s), or insight(s) using visual
representations of data.
Each judge assigned to a submission will give the submission a score from 1 to 5, and they will be
asked
the following questions:
- Is the story novel?
- Is the story original (i.e., the author’s own work not previously published elsewhere)?
- Is the story trustworthy and functional (i.e., is the message clearly communicated)?
- Is the story engaging and beautiful?
- Is the story informative and enlightening?
- Are the submission requirements met?
Accepted submissions will be published on the PacificVis Storytelling Contest website.
A selected set of accepted entries will receive awards (Honorable Mention and Best Storytelling
Awards).
Awards will be presented to the winners during the conference.
|
Dates |
Submission deadline |
January 25, 2024 (Thu) |
Notification date |
February 22, 2024 (Thu) |
Camera-ready submission |
March 14, 2024 (Thu) |
All dates are Midnight AOE.
Contest Chairs
John Thompson
Microsoft Research, USA
Juanjuan Long
JiangnanUniversity
Email: pvis_contest@pvis.org