YouTube: Data Docs – Bringing Data Literacy To The Masses With Interactive Videos And Live Data

Do you have an idea for how we might make data work for individuals and communities? The Knight News Challenge on Data will open Sept. 8 seeking the best ideas around that question. The challenge, open to anyone from anywhere, will close at 5:30 p.m. ET Sept. 30. Visit newschallenge.org beginning Sept. 8 to apply or to give feedback on proposals. Follow #newschallenge on Twitter for updates. Winners will share in $3 million. 

When Al Jazeera America published a video last year about the influence of money in politics, the user experience was interactive. Viewers could provide their addresses to personalize the video so it would display campaign spending by politicians in their area.

The goal: Audiences might care more deeply about the issue when they see how it impacts them. The interactive video ended up being nominated for a Webby Award.

Data Docs  

That video utilized Data Docs, open-source software that allows journalists to integrate video and a layer of interactive data content. In addition to personalization, the video stories might display updated figures relevant to the specific time someone is watching the video. The project received support in 2013-2014 from the Knight Prototype Fund, which helps innovators take early-stage information ideas from concept to demo. Participants join a cohort of other projects, receive human-centered design training and typically spend six months developing their ideas.

Data Docs is “a wonderful tool to have in your arsenal,” said Lam Thuy Vo, one of the three creators behind the software. It “should be something that you … think of when you have a story that’s appropriate for that.”

Videos utilizing Data Docs have to be produced in a certain way for the data to make sense, explained Thuy Vo, who is now interactive editor at Al Jazeera America. She stresses that people should actually think about the story before the platform.

Co-creator Joe Posner, a founding member of Vox.com and its video director, said Data Docs tries to “use Web technology to our advantage in linear storytelling.” The team had demonstrated how Data Docs might be used in a prototype video that displayed employment numbers in the United States.

“The challenge with a novel technology is just people can’t imagine what they would do with it because it’s new,” said co-creator Susan McGregor, who is now an assistant professor at Columbia Journalism School and assistant director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, both of which also receive Knight Foundation support.

McGregor would like to see people play around with the software and ask about the potential of Data Docs, such as whether Data Docs can do something currently or if a feature can be added,  say, to make a choose-your-own-adventure style video.

“My experience with most technologies is that they take off at the point that somebody figures out how to use them in an innovative way,” McGregor said.

Call it the Snow Fall effect – after the highly acclaimed 2012 New York Times feature story that demonstrated the potential of creative, interactive storytelling on the Web.

Using Data Docs requires knowledge of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. The technology also doesn’t work perfectly on all mobile platforms: It displays on Android devices, but because of the way iPhones handle video, it doesn’t work for iOS users.

Thuy Vo also said another barrier is people’s fear of learning technologies that might help leverage data because it can be a steep learning curve. “If you can get more people to become data-literate, it will become a little less scary,” she said.

In the future, Posner believes the ideas behind Data Docs will take hold across storytelling when a video incorporates data. “You should be able to interact with it,” Posner said. “You should be able to zoom out and zoom in. You should be able to have it be updated data.”

Vignesh Ramachandran is a Bay Area-based freelance journalist. He can be reached via email at [email protected].