Final Project Part3
Here is the final site: Crazy Sneakers
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Intended audience
I interviewed three schoolmates in Part 2. At that time, I chose some young people as my target audience, considering that my topic was mainly about sneakers which is a pop culture. But as I went deeper and tried to elaborate on the story, I thought the story should be told to young consumers who have less knowledge about sneakers. Because this presentation is relatively short in time, the content can be limited, for people who are already a “ sneakerhead “ there is no more information that he or she can refer to. But at the same time, the intended audience is also a potential sneaker consumer group, so that my call to action will have a real impact on this group.
Two of the three people I originally interviewed belonged to this group. So, as I continue to improve my story, I take these two viewers’ opinions more into account. But I also adopt some improvements that do not affect the structure of the story and are easier to achieve.
Change from feedback
First, I unified the aesthetic design of all visualizations. I took the color scheme of the Stockx, a sneaker resell website and applied it to all the visuals, so that there would be a unity of style and the audience would feel more engaged into my story.
Then I improved the size of some numbers in the visualization. I think the intuitive presentation of these numbers has a stronger impact on the viewer. Especially when the audience is watching on the screen, a lot of textual information is ignored and the numbers can convey the content better. Since a lot of the data is about the price of sneakers, I also add the dollar sign ($) to give more information.
During the group critique in class, I also learned from my classmates how to create more informative visualizations on canva. For example, the air jordan 1 image is created on canva. Also in the last lecture we worked on the use of radar charts. I also tried to make a radar chart on Raw graph. However, I found that the axes of the radar chart are not adjustable on this platform. When I showed the scores of the sneakers, the scores of a pair of sneakers were about 65-90 in all aspects. If I use the 0-100 axis, the difference between each radar chart is small and not easy to compare. So I adopted the radar chart from Flourish. I enhanced the comparison between the scores of different sneakers by adjusting the range of the axes.
Observations
When I reviewed my story again, I realized that the switch from the hype of sneakers to the part of the secondary market dealers take advantage of special opportunities to raise prices lacked some logic. So I thought of a trend data could be helpful to show the process of this change.
Google trends is a platform I was exposed to before. This platform can show the trend of some search content changes. Which is why I chose the keywords “sneaker raffle” and “sneaker botting” to show a new trend in the sneaker market in recent years. Brands hype some shoes with the method of raffle and limited edition, and these shoes are almost always bought by the dealers on the secondary market with robots and then being sold at a higher price.
Need to be improved in future
After watching other classmates’ presentations, I re-examined my project and the difficulties I encountered during the process, I believe that one of the problems I still haven’t solved is about the scope of the story, or the framework of my overall presentation is not centered around the narrative of the story.
I constructed the whole story from the beginning based on the data I had and the visualization I wanted to present. I wanted to show different visualizations through this project. But this process I ignored the story itself, which is actually the core of a presentation. I never found the conflict in the story, so it led to a lack of connection between many aspects of the story. When I talked to my classmates, they told me to clarify a Call to Action, which was very helpful and gave my story some structure. But I think this Call to Action is still not specific and clear enough. Many presentations focus on solving a specific problem, but maybe my presentation is mainly about a cultural phenomenon, which may be difficult to evaluate as a good or bad phenomenon. This also leads to a story that lacks a conflict and the content is difficult to focus.
Now I feel that visualization is a tool to help tell the story, and polishing the story itself is probably more important. I should continue to narrow the scope of the topic and focus on one main conflict to build the whole story.