It has been a really fascinating task, sourcing the people to do the survey and then using the data to make better choices.
Your Participant Recruitment Statement
In the end, because I was using Facebook, WhatsApp and my yoga mailing list to do the call out, I decided to keep my statement casual and to the point.
I have a big favour to ask, it will take five minutes max. Think of it as a birthday present!
I would love to get LOTS of you involved.
Your Participation Request Communication
I decided to keep my request simple so kept the instructions as short as possible.
Can you please watch Test A and then do survey A, and then watch Test B and then do survey B. Animations are about 30 seconds each.
There are no wrong answers – really – it is for a uni assignment and you'll also get an insight into the way that I think.
Details of Your Survey Data
I followed the survey instructions to the letter.
Test A
Test B
Details of Your Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses
My main focus was to get as many participants as I could so that I would have as much data as possible to make the best key findings I could. In the end I had 46 participants for Test A and 41 for Test B.
Attrition of numbers was also visible in the tests, with some answers being skipped, but interestingly, sporadically.
I also had feedback from two participants who struggled with technology.
Quantitative
The breakdown of the numbers, really helped to clarify for me that what I see, and, more importantly what people do see can be wildly different.
Test A
The majority or 46.67% believed that the animation told a story.
60.87% of the group said that the animation was interesting to watch.
This answer showed that that most weren't sure (45.65%), neither agreeing or disagreeing –with another large group or 30.43% saying that no, it didn't.
This is almost a perfect third across the board, meaning to me, that animation didn't succeed in evoking any emotion.
Quite a strong response to this answer, an almost exact split between evoking the feeling of anticipation and calm.
Test B
The answer here is stronger than in Test A, with 56% believing that the animation does tell a story.
A reasonable response for Test B, coming in at 51.22%
This one shows that though the group agrees mostly there was a story being told, they don't know what it's message actually is.
Looking at these results, I feel like I could have done more to evoke emotion in the story. I was so focused on the story that I didn't put enough thought into what I wanted to make the audience feel beyond the connection of a mother and child or partner and their spouse.
Another result showing that by not focusing on more than a connection, I missed an opportunity to have the audience feel something.
Qualitative
For me, these answers were the most useful in reflecting on how to better plan content and on what I should consider when making it.
I really enjoyed reading the answers that came through even though a lot were unsure about what was actually happening in the animations.
Test A
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1. "The little dots and big dots are joined and they move out from their pod and the little dots go off to form a new shape together, and it feels like a happy story."
2. "Dots go along a series of lines and become ‘trapped’ and organised in a triangle."
3. "Too long to explain, but there are dots moving around and then something that looks like a laptop in front of them, which then turns out not to be a laptop."
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1. "The child has grown up and left the home and disappeared. the parent goes back to the home."
2. "A parent letting go of a child into a new environment eg. going to school."
3. "Some choose to stay in their old habitat, some have a more pioneering spirit."
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1. "It's ok to let go - everyone does it and that's how they grow/evolve."
2. "Shows what happens to the dots."
3. "Show a normal day."
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1."I knew what the objective was."
2."Some more excitment on getting together."
3."The two sides worked together more."
On the whole, there were glimmers of understanding in the confusion. A parent, school and child was identified, the viewers largely saw that the dots were moving toward something. There was also a small emotive response from half the group, who felt that there was a journey taking place.
Test B
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1. "The dots escape the structure of the left but then enclosed again. The jiggling suggests that the dots do not object to the capture."
2. "Seems like it’s very unified and regimented - kids leaving home and being ‘drilled’ in some uniform structured way."
3. "Some dots leave their homes and enter a square where they end up being all together."
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1. "Repetitiveness of daily life."
2. "The romance has ended and the circle has gone to a new home and had kids."
3. "Moving in a new environment and being treated equally."
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1. "To evidence that as humans we seek to find meaning in everything."
2. "Describes daily life."
3. "Exploring themes around imprisonment and control."
Here are a few selected responses from this section:
1. "Sounds and words to support meaning."
2. "If the graph contained words describing what symbols represent."
3. "Captions. Or music for evoking emotion."
The part that was most interesting for me here, is how some of the viewers interweaved the Test A story with the Test B story. There is still though lots of confusion and not a clear understanding of what is happening in the animation.
Your Key Findings
I've had a lot of learnings from this task, among them and likely the most important for me, is that just because I think other's will understand does not mean that they will.
Viewers want the story to make sense – and by that I mean they want a beginning, middle and end, which I didn't give them.
Watching two videos together, one after another makes viewers link them together as two halves of one whole. So quite a few thought that the kids had grown up in the second clip.
If you don't give viewers a story, they will make up their own – case in point, the viewers who decided that they were creating Pink Floyd's album cover.
Similarity and size – do make people believe that (a) objects are related and (b) one is an adult / parent.
Knowing the emotive response you want is important at the outset, and key to plan for. I did not think about this enough in my first video other than to have the mother and kids / or the couple close together (proximity) to indicate a relationship.
Your Comparative Report
So how did I go in the end?
Let's look at what I hoped that the viewers would see:
1. There is a house / home – the later implies, at least for me, a place of comfort of safety.
2. In the house there are two subjects that have a relationship.
3. There is a commute to a second place.
4. Note that there is a secondary building / structure.
5. Notice there is a subject in charge at the second structure.
On the whole, I would say I had a reasonable success rate, with a large proportion of the qualitative data showing that they saw some of the story I had planned for Test A. Unfortunately Test B was not as successful with viewers struggling to identify the story and characters.
Let's break it down further, by each point:
1. A large proportion of the group recognised that there was a place, and some even called a home.
2. About half the group named the parent and child, but no one saw the couple when I made the sizes the same and the shapes different.
3. In this, I succeeded, nearly all of the viewers identified movement from one place or structure to the next.
4. Again, here, about 75% of the group saw the second structure as separate from the first.
5. About 15% of the group noticed their was a subject in charge at the second place, none identified a teacher or boss, but one said that it looked like a leader was emerging.
In end, I have learned that I have a lot still left to learn, and that planning what you want someone to feel and takeaway from what you make is far more important than I ever thought before.
Did I do well?
I didn’t do as well as I had hoped, but I did learn a lot. I definitely want to plan more and especially consider how I want to make people feel. Though the participants had some idea of what I was trying to do, it didn’t make them feel something, and at the end of the day that is something that I want to do.
In remaking the video, I wanted to have more of a sense of conclusion, have the parent linger at the gate, then return to collect the child and bring them home.
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