A Case Study ofData Visualizationand Storytelling
Workshop forMiddle SchoolStudents
7 TOPICS

12Family size and thenumber of brothers
and sisters

ABSTRACTVisualization and storytelling skills
can be trained during early school years.
We aimed to teach visualization knowledge
through a workshop whose participants
were 100 middle school students acrossThailand. With several tangible materials
and an assigned topic, a group of five
students collected data, mostly from a
primary source, produced a visualizationand gave a short presentation on datainsights. Despite different backgrounds,
all groups shared similar visualization
types. Concrete and abstract data
representations in pictographs,
bar charts, and pie charts were popular.

43

Bedtime andwake up time

Favoritepizzatoppings

65

Favorite
smart phone
applications

How one traveledto the workshop
location(in Bangkok)

7

Favorite or
mos popularsong lyrics

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Shoe types
and sizes

There were a variety of visual data stories. Some

20 GROUPS
OF 5 STUDENTS

1.1

1.2

1.3

1.4

2.1

2.2

2.3

3.1

3.2

4.1

5.1

5.2

5.3

5.4

6.1

6.2

6.3

7.1

7.2

7.3

stories consisted of multiple visualizations. Some
stories had no visual encodings; their data were simply
written in big numbers of equal size and they were not• age 12 to 15• 57 female and 43 male• 7 schools from Bangkok
13 schools from others.

We
providedan unlimited
supply ofstationery
materials

organized in any visual way.
Pictographs and bar charts were the most popular. Piecharts came in a close second. Other visualizations,Venn diagram and word cloud, were used once. A table
might not be universally classified as a visualization
but the data were, at least, structurally organized.
When there was more than one visualization in a story,
a pictograph was among the visualizations.
Venn diagram was the only visualization type we did notpens,papers,
paper clips,
rubber bands,
buttons,and balloons.

60 minutes to create

Datasets were notprovided. They had
to acquire theirown data via
various methods
including quick
surveys andsecondary data
downloads fromthe internet.

mention in the workshop introduction. We conjectured
that the students learned about the diagram from theirclass materials at school. They might have seen one
from a website or through social media as well.
Notice that both table and word cloud were only present
in the topic on song lyrics. Except the word cloud forsong lyrics. We observed that the topic of phone
applications seemed to be the hardest to visuallyillustrate. Only one group did it in a pictograph,arguably one of less abstract visualizations.
The degrees of abstraction varied. Due to our workshop
materials, most visualizations were composed oftangible objects and drawings. The visual elements inthe charts and diagram were more abstract, comparedwith the units of a pictograph and a word cloud. In
total, the number of abstract data representations wasslightly more than the number of concrete or pictorial
depictions.

VISUALDATA STORY

Pictograph
X 6

Bar
Chart

Pie
ChartVenn
Diagram

WordCloudTable

X 6

X 5

X 1

X 1

X 1

Puripant Ruchikachorn

Chulalongkorn University
Punch Up

puripant@cbs.chula.ac.th
puripant@boonmeelab.com

Patchar Duangklad

Thanisara Ruangdej

Punch Up

Punch Up

patchar@punchup.world

thanisara@punchup.world