R\'ECITKIT: A Spatial Toolkit for Designing and Evaluating Human-Centered Immersive Data Narratives

TL;DR

RÉCITKIT is a spatial toolkit designed to facilitate the creation and evaluation of immersive, human-centered data narratives in head-mounted display environments, demonstrated through an interactive historical map experience.

Contribution

The paper introduces RÉCITKIT, a novel toolkit that supports spatial data storytelling in immersive environments, enabling interactive and hierarchical narrative exploration.

Findings

Spatial interactions improve insight formation.

Guided narration enhances user engagement.

Participants suggest improvements for interaction visibility.

Abstract

Spatial computing presents new opportunities for immersive data storytelling, yet there is limited guidance on how to build such experiences or adapt traditional narrative visualizations to this medium. We introduce a toolkit, R\'ECITKIT for supporting spatial data narratives in head-mounted display (HMD) environments. The toolkit allows developers to create interactive dashboards, tag data attributes as spatial assets to 3D models and immersive scenes, generate text and audio narratives, enabling dynamic filtering, and hierarchical drill-down data discoverability. To demonstrate the utility of the toolkit, we developed Charles Minard's historical flow map of Napoleon's 1812 campaign in Russia as an immersive experience on Apple Vision Pro. We conducted a preliminary evaluation with 21 participants that comprised two groups: developers, who evaluated the toolkit by authoring spatial stories and consumers, who provided feedback on the Minard app's narrative clarity, interaction design, and engagement. Feedback highlighted how spatial interactions and guided narration enhanced insight formation, with participants emphasizing the benefits of physical manipulation (e.g., gaze, pinch, navigation) for understanding temporal and geographic data. Participants also identified opportunities for future enhancement, including improved interaction affordance visibility, customizable storytelling logic, and integration of contextual assets to support user orientation. These findings contribute to the broader discourse on toolkit-driven approaches to immersive data storytelling across domains such as education, decision support, and exploratory analytics.