Toward Supporting Narrative-Driven Data Exploration: Barriers and Design Opportunities

TL;DR

This paper investigates the challenges faced by analysts in narrative-driven data exploration, identifying barriers like maintaining context and tracing reasoning, and proposes design opportunities to enhance support for such exploratory processes.

Contribution

It provides empirical insights from a formative study and highlights design opportunities to improve narrative-driven data exploration tools.

Findings

Identified key barriers in narrative-driven data exploration.

Proposed design opportunities to address these barriers.

Empirical study with 48 participants.

Abstract

Analysts increasingly explore data through evolving, narrative-driven inquiries, moving beyond static dashboards and predefined metrics as their questions deepen and shift. As these explorations progress, insights often become dispersed across views, making it challenging to maintain context or clarify how conclusions arise. Through a formative study with 48 participants, we identify key barriers that hinder narrative-driven exploration, including difficulty maintaining context across views, tracing reasoning paths, and externalizing evolving interpretations. Our findings surface design opportunities to support narrative-driven analysis better.