Go Back to Part 1 of my Final Project
I completed my storyboarding in Shorthand. My rough outline and storyboarding on Shorthand can be found embedded below:
Given that my project is trying to examine university endowments, and ultimately convince my audience to not give money to their alma maters, my target audience is college graduates. Additionally, I wanted to interview individuals who had graduated from college recently (within the last 5 years) for whom my message might reasonate the most due to the fact that they are more likely to be cash-strapped and therefore want to be judicious about how they spend their money. My message may be less successful or persuasive for individuals who graduated college over 10 years ago because they are more like to have more discretionary funds to spend and therefore may want to spend that money on donating to their alma maters.
In line with the description above of my target audience, I sought out individuals who had recently graduated from college and tried to find a few different ages, types of universities attended, demographics, and racial breakdowns. I reached out to family and friends who fit these criteria. The information that I wanted to collect on my interview subjects were the following:
In designing my user research protocol, I was primarily concerned with three main themes: Aesthetics & Layout, Logical Coherence, and Persuasive Effectiveness. As such, my interview script was broken down as follows:
Aesthetics & Layout:
Logical Coherence:
Persuasive Effectiveness:
Overall:
The findings for my interview are summarized below:
| Interview Questions | Interviewee #1 Gender: Female Race: White Age: 26 Years Since College Graduation : 4 Type of College Attended (Public vs Private): Private State of Residence: PA |
Interviewee #2 Gender: Female Race: Black Age: 25 Years Since College Graduation : 3 Type of College Attended (Public vs Private): Private State of Residence: NC |
Interviewee #3 Gender: Female Race: Black Age: 27 Years Since College Graduation : 5 Type of College Attended (Public vs Private): Private State of Residence: IL |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. What are your initial reactions to the layout and logical structure of the website? | Overall, the sections logically flow together. I was curious as to why you chose to only display the top 20 universities (in terms of endowment size). If you had more time for the analysis, I would be interested to see the top 200 or more colleges. Also, with this larger dataset, I would be curious to see deeper analysis into the difference between public and private universities’ uses of endowments. Additionally, in the argument about universities’ influence on the median income in the zip codes in which they reside, I wonder if it might be more useful to show the endowment sizes relative to the state’s median income. Universities often play a role in shaping the lives of people not just in their cities but in their states as well. Also, maybe instead of focusing on median income, you could focus on what universities are investing their endowments in and tie this into exisiting conversations about divestment and historical divesment movements. | There is a logical flow in how your storyboard is structured. I like that there is not too much text to read and that it primarily makes use of visuals. Particularly, I like the inclusion of the “Just How Large is $39 billlion” part of the analysis. | The flow between each of the sections makes sense. I think that the definition of an endowment is helpful. The charts do a good job of putting into context how large the endowments are for each of the universities and how they compare to one another. |
| 2. What are some of the things that are working about the overall layout/use of color? Do you find the colors to be distracting or do they compliment the story | The colors used are good and are not dstracting. | The red in the endowment definition is a little blurred and hard to read. It could be helpful to choose a softer color or eliminate the red color altogether. | I also find the red color used for the highlights throughout the storyboard to be hard to read. Perhaps using a lighter orange color could be a better fit that still empahsizes these numbers/phrases but is easier on the eyes. |
| 3. What are some things that are confusing in the layout or use of color that you would want to see improved? | The layout and color aren’t confusing. I would just recommend fixing the capitalization in the call to action section. | (See Above) | (See above) |
| 4. Are the visualizations clear in what they are showing? If not, what could be improved in the visualizations? | In the map, it would be helpful to emphasize that you’re focused on city-level information instead of state-level information because currently it’s unclear what the main point of the map is intended to be. Also, it would be helpful to have a clearer title to better contextualize the map. (Note: Originally the title on the Map was “Top 10 University Endowments & Their Median Incomes”, which was a placeholder but also confusing for this user to interpret what “their” was in reference to in this case.) | Yes, the visualizations are clear to me in terms of what’s supposed to be displayed. (Note: I had prefaced that the map wasn’t completed for this interview.) | I’m unfamiliar with the difference between linear and log charts so that was a point of confusion for me in the grid of charts. For the bar charts in the table, it would be helpful for the bars to include the label inside of the bar instead of as a popup. Also, from the GDP table, I took away not that Harvard’s endowment was too large but that Rwanda has a very small GDP. Perhaps using multiple different countries as a comparison point would be useful or use countries with an almost 1:1 ratio to emphasize the scale of the university’s endowment. |
| 5. Is the story that is being told clear? Are you able to clearly link the sections of the website together through the visualizations? | Yes, the logical flow of the website is clear and the section headers help with making the story that is told clear. | Yes, I find that the call to action is clear and that the overall logic is clear. | Overall, yes – I am able to easily link the various sections together and understand what story is meant to be told. |
| 6. From a logical coherence perspective, what parts for improvement do you think should be prioritized? | The map at the end is the part that is still difficult to understand and needs some improvement. (See above for further detail) | One thing I am left wondering is “where does endowment money go?”. This would be useful to have as well in order to add further evidence for the logical argument that you are trying to make. | I think that having more information on how endowment money is used could be helpful. If you can’t easily find this data, even making the point that it is difficult to find this information and that the endowment spending disclosure process is opaque could be helpful for the reader to understand. |
| 7. Is there sufficient evidence presented in the website to support this main point? If not, What additional information would you need for the visualizations to be sufficiently persuasive? | Similar to the above question,the map at the end is the part that is still difficult to understand and needs some improvement. I think the title needs to be clarified and also the relative median income or other measure to use should be clarified – i.e. does it make more sense to focus on the city-level median income or on the median income of the state? Typically, universities have an impact beyond the city that they are located in, so perhaps it makes sense to also expand the median income context to cover a larger area than is currently being covered. | Overall yes, but see above for potential improvements. | Overall yes, also see above for some suggestions. |
| 8. Does the website in its current form inspire you to learn more about college endowments? | Yes! | Yes! It may even be helpful to include links to investigative journalism pieces or something related to endowments that would allow readers to learn more about this topic. | Yes, I definitely wanted to learn more about your topic after seeing the storyboard and wanted to be pointed towards resources where I could learn more. |
| 9. Do you feel like you’ve learned something from this website? | Yes! | Yes! | Yes! |
| 10. Is there anything that you were hoping to learn through the website that you weren’t able to learn, with the current way that the information is provided? | I would’ve liked more information on the breakdown of how endowments are invested. Having this information could help to strengthen your overall argument. | As previously discussed above, having more direction towards where to learn more about the topics discussed in the website could be useful. This could be included either in the call to action section or in another earlier section. | As mentioned above, I would’ve liked to see more countries to compare their GDPs to that of a given university. Having these additional country comparisons could make the choice of Rwanda as a reference point seem less random. |
| 11. Do you have any final thoughts or suggestions that weren’t already covered in the previous questions? | I think it would be nice to include an actual list of nonprofits to donate to in your call to action OR some kind of comparison of how your donation would be used for a non-profit vs how it could be used for a university. | I would just say to fix the capitalization in the call to action section. Also, make sure that all of the actions in the call to action section do or do not have periods at the end. | I might suggest trying to show the median income in a neighboring town on the map and adding some additional references to existing literature on this topic could be useful. |
The key improvements needed for my final presentation that I noted from my user research were the following: