Storytelling in Information Visualizations: Does it Engage Users to Explore Data?

We present the results of three web-based field experiments, in which we evaluate the impact of using initial narrative visualization techniques and storytelling on user-engagement with exploratory information visualizations. We conducted these experiments on a popular news and opinion outlet, and on a popular visualization gallery website. While datajournalism exposes visualizations to a large public, we do not know how effectively this public makes sense of interactive graphics, and in particular if people explore them to gain additional insight to that provided by the journalists. In contrast to our hypotheses, our results indicate that augmenting exploratory visualizations with introductory 'stories' does not seem to increase user-engagement in exploration.