Wireframes / storyboards

I’m so glad that I used Flourish and Infogram to actually build out my “sketches”, because it made the process of transitioning into Shorthand so much easier! I just pulled the accurate school data from each website to get accurate tuition and fee figures, and I also was able to get my own data from a rogue email sweep. From feedback I’ve received on my draft in Shorthand, I will end up building out at least one more chart in the final section (which I knew I wanted to build out anyway, but this just solidified it).

Here is the link I sent out to my friends: Go here

User research

Target audience

Include your approach to identifying representative individuals, and who you hope to reach with your story.

I have INTENTIONALLY shifted my audience to be general policy makers, administrators, and the public who want to learn more about what it takes to study theatre in college. The field itself has always been very secretive, and part of my reason for choosing this topic was that I wanted to demystify the process. I’ve chosen to use accessible language that helps to lower the hurdle that could present itself if I were to use too much industry-specific language.

Interview script

List the goals from your research, and the questions you intend to ask.

Did any statistics surprise you? (I’m asking this because I threw in a few callout statistics, and I want to see if the story is intuitive to follow).
Who do you think is the intended audience for this? (This is for user engagement and to see if my objective audience is transferring)
Is the story aesthetically pleasing? (This is for aesthetics and clarity, I don’t want to have any colors that are too jarring or anything confusing).
Are the graphs easy to understand? (This is for intuition and clarity).
What questions do you still have? (This is where I’m pulling out my change orders, and seeing if there’s anything else to add or work on).

Interview findings

I asked a few of my peers that have varying levels of exposure to theatre to take a look at my project so far. These answers are taken verbatim from their written thoughts, so apologies for any typos or casual verbiage.

A. A statistics major who is minoring in theatre, 20’s

0.5% acceptance rate is crazy—the cost of the tony is also thought-provoking, if maybe not surprising.
People who generally have not engaged with the world of college theatre—it feels purposefully accessible to all levels of knowledge.
It’s pretty—though the beige-ish reddish background screens are a little jarring each time. after the first—it’s really nice on the first slide with the orange photo, but a little weird each time after that.
On the whole, yes! The pie chart of Unified audition cost breakdown is a little messy—two items having the same coloration makes me wonder why they were grouped together. On “The Cost of One Year of “Broadway School”, the colors are also quite confusing—particularly as they are inconsistent with the colors in the graph immediately above. Why do some get colors and some get grey?

B. A CMU Arts Management student, 20’s 1) the audition and application fees as well as the costs for applying to theatre programming as compared to other college tracks
2) general public or policy makers, it is accessible and facts are well-described in a way that anyone could understand the importance and impact of the data they’re seeing 3) yes! 4) yes; the color scheming and general chart design allow for an easy understanding of the data- I particularly liked the tony winners graph depicting where winners attended school 5) none :)

C. A theatre major at one of the top 10 schools mentioned, 20’s

No, but only because I went through the college audition process
University administrators and professors at colleges offering MT degrees, students seeking MT degrees, parents/caretakers of students seeking MT degrees, high school guidance counselors. But it is easy to read and understand!
Yes
Yes
All of my questions were answered in the presentation 😊

D. A friend of mine who has no theatre background, 20’s

not really, the arts always be absurdly expensive
prospective theater program applicants
yes, i like all the pictures
yes
how many people typically apply to these programs yearly?

E. A CMU student who is not studying theatre or the arts but performs as an extracurricular, 20’s

Honestly, I am not surprised by the topics, but that is just because I am slightly familiar with the topic. I was never interested in applying to school for theater, but I know for the people that want to, I always knew that it was a lot of money. With theater programs, it is usually the case where the wealthy have the best opportunities at being able to audition at a lot of places.
To me, I feel the audience is to colleges to call out this problem but also to the people who need to see the reality of the costs behind theater applications to schools. 3 and 4. I think the story was incredibly pleasing. I really liked the format, and the graphs were easy to follow along.
I don’t really have any follow up questions except do you expect to see a shift in any prices for tuition at these schools as they become more competitive? Overall, such a nice job!

F. A CMU School of Drama student, 20’s

YES pls i did not know that application fees were that different because i only applied for theatre like that’s crazy
I genuinely think professors and admissions ppl would read this (at least the SoD ppl do read about like admissions and stuff from what i’ve talked to them about)! i wonder if the written parts could be more worded like speaking to them or the general public because i fear that parts feel just slightly more like you are telling like whoever you’re getting this project reviewed by
yes totally! i think this is professional as well as exciting to look at and drew me in
graphs are super easy to understand, in my opinion
i think i am just excited to learn more about like how diversity impacts this ya know?

Identified changes for Part III

Document the changes you plan on implementing next week to address any issues identified.

Research synthesis	Anticipated changes for Part III
Keep building out the last section, make those diversity statistics into a sort of graph	Make the statistics into a sort of appealing graph or infographic.
Add more of my thoughts on the trends in tuition pricing	This is where I’ll go back to the College Board source or some sort of other authority on higher education and find another callout statistic since they seem to be impacting the audience so far.
I PERSONALLY want to look at the cost graphic again. The colors aren’t really holding any significance right now…	I’d like to figure that out, ideally.

…include any final thoughts you have here.

I’m excited that I’ve gotten some good feedback so far! I hope that I am in a good place leading up to the final part of the project. I know that I will have a lot of work to do in terms of creating another visualization and making sure I’ve cited absolutely everything perfectly, but I think it’s doable between now and next week.