Paper Reading #1: Sequential Arts for Science and CHI

Commentary

See what I have to say about Zack's and John's work.

References

Rowland, D., et al. (2010). Sequential arts for science and chi. Proceeding of the Acm conference on human factors in computing systems& (pp. 2651-2660). Atlanta: http://www.sigchi.org/chi2010/.

Article Summary

Rowland and his associates performed several preliminary experiments on the relationship between sequential art and several specific scientific processes with the help of Plasq's Comic Life program. Their method of delivery was in a sequential art format: the paper is actually a comic strip. The authors cite the impact that visual media have for visual creatures such as human beings. One author puts it succinctly:

"This paper suggests that sequential art offers unique mechanisms of communication that may be of use to science."

In the first experiment, a group of children completed a science project in which they had to design an effective alternative energy solution through wind power; their teacher documented their progress. Then the children were asked to create a "photostory" with the use of the Comic Life program that depicted the experiment from start to finish.

In the second experiment, the physiological responses and facial expressions of people on theme park rides were both recorded with respect to time, and the participants were given a DVD of their faces during the ride. They were later asked to select images that corresponded to different emotions they felt while on the ride, and these images were made into a photostory for them.

Discussion

This paper is about as brief an overview of this topic as one might imagine, but to be fair, the authors were sure to point out the "preliminary [nature of their] studies" from the start. I agree that the use of sequential art could be very powerful at "keeping only the essence" of an idea, as one author points out. It is even postulated that "reality can be sampled and distilled into concepts" through the use of visual communication method. That being said, the only things I would fault this work on are:

• drawing from one example that, from what I can see, was already pretty distilled (case in point: the childrens' alternative energy science experiments);
• and not actually distilling the concepts out of the reality of the theme park ride experiment (or at least not providing the results of the study).

I think that the next step in this research should be to apply it to a more complex model or task, say, modeling an internal combustion engine. For example, one might want to show that:

1. It is possible to contain enough information using sequential art to explain internal combustion (to some degree of complexity).
2. The information contained by the sequential art is somehow comparable in complexity to the information contained by the reality of the task, i.e. in a mechanical engineering textbook.

Basically, for this idea to take hold, one must be able to prove the possibility and the efficacy of the use of sequential art in a practical situation. Case in point: what would be an acceptible level of complexity and distillation for something like this?

I, for one, would be interested to see that happen.