Visual Storytelling Through Videos
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Transforming Evaluation
Part 1
Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to AEA’s annual evaluation conference this year (I chose a Mai Tai on the beaches of Maui instead). However, one of the wonderful things about the Internet is that I was able to feel like I was part of the conference by following #eval19 on Twitter. So what was my one big takeaway through the Twitter lens? Of course, it came from the evaluation guru himself, Michael Quinn Patton (MQP) – “Evaluating transformation means transforming evaluation.”
Transforming evaluation utilization
I couldn’t agree more. Just a few weeks ago our Three Hive team got together to do some visioning around how to transform the evaluation experience for our clients. But before we started thinking about that ideal experience we spent some time slagging the field we live, breathe and work in. We first had to answer why people (not our clients of course 😉) think it sucks before we could imagine a new reality for them. Here’s what we came up with:
There are of course things on this list we can’t or won’t fix. At the end of the day we need to get paid so, yes, it is always going to cost money. But we see a lot of opportunity transforming those “pointless,” “not full buy-in,” “reports aren’t useful,” points. In other words, how can we better engage our clients, specifically when it comes to how and what data is collected and reported? This obviously isn’t a novel idea; MQP wrote an entire book on utilization focused evaluation, but this blog series explores some current trends that can and should be adopted more broadly by fellow evaluators to improve utilization and transform evaluation.
Transforming utilization through visual storytelling
Humans have been telling stories for thousands of years and the reason is that people respond to stories - good stories evoke emotion. Some even believe that storytelling could be an evolutionary mechanism that helped keep our ancestors alive. The theory is if you tell a story instead of facts you’ll be more likely to survive because stories have more impact. For example, if someone said, “don’t go by that tree there’s an animal over there it wouldn’t be as effective as “my cousin was eaten by a vicious, scary creature lurking behind that tree – you better stay away”. The latter evokes emotion not just data. And if you can weave a story people remember information up to 22 times more than facts alone.
As evaluators we are no different than marketers; we want people to recall what we are saying. We all recall the famous Puppy Love Superbowl commercial by Budweiser not just because it had two adorable animals befriending each other but because it had an endearing story that took us on an emotive journey. We might not want someone to go buy Budweiser but a lot of times we do want people to remember the story we tell so they can make a change to improve what they do.
We are inching our way toward being better visual storytellers. Stephanie Evergreen became the Rockstar of evaluation conferences because she recognized how poorly evaluators were communicating their information and began introducing simple ways for evaluators to tell their story through effective data visualization. But effective data viz is only one tool in the evaluator’s visual storyteller toolbox. To truly transform how clients utilize information let’s think beyond graphs and static reports and look to how we like to consume and digest information.
Visual storytelling through video
Did you know that after Google, YouTube is the second most popular website? Did you know that YouTube users view more than 1 billion hours of video each day? A Facebook executive predicts that by 2021 their platform will be all video and no text. Why? Because video is a natural storytelling medium; people make emotional connections through sight, sound and motion, and emotion leads to recall. So, if we want people to remember the information we uncover let’s start making videos! Here are some ideas for how to use video in our evaluation:
1
Reporting
The most obvious ways we can do this is using video for our reporting. I’m imagining a world where, like that Facebook exec, we do away with text (or at least minimize it as a primary means of reporting) and embrace video as platforms to tell the story we want to tell. We have experimented with this medium by producing short whiteboards videos, which is a simple and cost-effective way to create a video. However, there are lots of companies out there with platforms that allow us to create our own non-animated video products (e.g. Kaltura).
2
Data collection
Imagine creating a personalized video email that goes out to your evaluation participants explaining to them what data you need collected and why it is so important to collect it. We’ve all read emails with lengthy text blocks explaining what someone wants us to do, but I’ve never opened an email where I click and have some talking to me about the importance of the evaluation.
Included in that video is a link taking people to the project’s own video channel. The video channel might include another series of videos explaining, or better yet, showing evaluation participants how to collect data, enter data, the list goes on – basically anything we’ve been typing out in an information sheet or instruction sheet could be made into a video and saved on the video channel for project participants to access.
These videos could even be interactive videos that are like a choose your own adventure book. In other words, if methods differ for stakeholder groups we can tailor the video content according to stakeholder groups through interactive video - mind blown! Take a look at this article for more information on interactive video.
Of course, the video channel could also be used to collect video content generated by your evaluation participants. Participants could capture data through video on their phone, upload it to the project’s video channel and at the same time access the video created and uploaded by other participants – talk about real-time feedback!
These are of course just a few ideas for how to incorporate video into our evaluation in an effort to improve engagement and utilization. What are some other ideas you have for how video can transform evaluation? Did anyone see any interesting examples of this at AEA?
Next up, let’s take it one step further in this blog series and talk augmented and virtual reality and what it means for evaluation.
