portfolio
Final Project Proposal
Rainbow Flag in Taiwan: The Journey to Same-Sex Marriage Equality
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On this page, I documented the thorough design and implementation process of my final project.
In Part I, I developed a pitch for the final presentation that included copies to working datasets. I also identified how I intended to tell the story, identifying the method and medium I planned on using.
In Part II, I started to construct the actual narrative that will take the reader on the journey through the story complemented with sketches, wireframes, storyboards and moodboards. I also completed user research on the idea, and looked for ways to improve the story.
By the end of Part III, my final deliverable is complete and publicly accessible as a web page.
Withouot further do, let’s dive right in!
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PART I - THE IDEA
Being internationally recognized as a leader in LGBTQ rights, Taiwan is the first in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. However, many may be surprised by the referendum results rejecting marriage equality in 2018, in which around 70% voted against same-sex marriage. The project will be focusing on Taiwan’s journey to same-sex marriage equality, and how Taiwanese stood up from the setback and made love and equality prevail.
Project Outline
The story will be structured in chronological order, where there are three main components: (1) LGBTQ History in Taiwan, (2) Taiwanese Referendum 2018, and (3) Same-sex marriage legalization in 2019.
As a hook to grab the audience’s attention from the first sentence, I plan to share a recent headline that Taiwan wins the bid over Washington D.C. to host the 2025 World Pride Parade, showing the love and equality prevailing in the country.
▍LGBTQ History in Taiwan
I plan to start by briefly going through the LGBTQ history in Taiwan. The concise but informative timeline can serve as the background knowledge of the governmental and civic activities related to LGBTQ rights. I have yet to identify the best approach to present the data, so I will put them in a timeline format now.
▍Taiwanese Referendum 2018
As the story goes on, the readers will be entering the “lowest ebb” of the story. I will not only show how the anti-LGBTQ organizations were trying to destroy human rights but show how frustrating the referendum result was.
I plan to develop a Tableau dashboard that the audience can have an interactive experience when reviewing the referendum result. The dashboard would be composed of an arc chart showing the composition of the voting result, and a choropleth graph showing the percentage of “Yes” votes by the city in Taiwan.
▍Same-sex marriage legalization in 2019
Finally, the story will end with happy news, the same-sex marriage legalization in Taiwan. Aside from the narrative story, I will also use a grid plot to highlight that Taiwan is the first in Asia that legalizes same-sex marriage.
I hope to share the joy and freedom in Taiwan with the readers, and inform the readers that it has been a long journey for Taiwan to achieve equality. Even if you haven’t seen the green light on LGBTQ rights in your country, never give up on advocating for gender equity.
(Disclaimer: All data shown in the sketches is not accucurate as they are only the preliminary sketches used to show the concepts for the future visualizations.)
Data Sources
There are 4 tentative data sources that I will plan to use for visualizations. #1, #2 and #4 are web data; #3 can be found at the Google Drive.
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Timeline of LGBTQ History in Taiwan (Source: Wikiwand)
The data will be used as an overview of the LGBTQ history in Taiwan, illustrating both governmental and civic activities. -
LGBTQ Rights in Taiwan (Source: EQUALDEX)
The data will be used as a piece of supplementary information on the LGBTQ history in Taiwan. I plan to use some of the numbers to create infographics that can show the audience more interesting insights. -
2018 Referendum Results (Source: rfrd-tw.github.io)
The data will be used to show the results that a majority of the voters rejected same-sex marriage and the implementation of LGBTQ-inclusive education. -
Countries where Same-Sex Marriage is Legal (Source: Good Morning America)
The data will be used to highlight that Taiwan is the first and only country that legalizes same-sex marriage in Asia.
Method and Medium
As a next step after the initial proposal, I plan to develop wireframes and storyboards. I will also conduct a series of user interviews to collect iterative feedback for both wireframes and future visualizations.
The final deliverable will be presented using Shorthand, a digital storytelling platform. I plan to tell the story using narration along with the supporting data visualizations. All data visualizations will be created using Tableau, Flourish, or PlotDB, whichever fits the best.
PART II - DESIGN AND USER RESEARCH
In part II of my final project, I continued constructing and refining the narrative that will take the reader on the journey through my story. Built on the initial proposal, I developed the wireframes and storyboards and conducted user interviews with three potential target individuals of my story.
Storyboards with Wireframes
I divided the story into the following five parts:
- Hook: Taiwan to host 2025 World Pride
- LGBTQ History in Taiwan
- Taiwanese Referendum 2018
- Same-sex marriage legalization in 2019 and its influence on LGBTQ rights in Asia
- Call to action: Be yourself whenever you’re ready
The storyboards I used for user research can be found here.
User Research Protocol
▍Target audience
The target audience for my story is the LGBTQ community, their friends and family, and people who support LGBTQ. More specifically, I wish to use the story to reach out to the LGBTQ community in Asia, who are fearful, discomfort with, or mistrust of themselves being lesbian, gay, or bisexual. In Asia, LGBTQ rights are relatively limited in comparison to other areas of the world. I wish my story to stand to encourage their self-acceptance and let them know there is always support when they are ready to be themselves.
▍Approach to Identify Representative Individuals
Luckily, I graduated from a university where LGBTQ is widely accepted. I’ve made a few good friends who are LGBTQ themselves, or have a friend or family member who is LGBTQ. I interviewed three of them:
- A bisexual who is studying in law school now; female, mid-20s
- An LGBTQ supporter who is studying in policy school now; female, mid-20s
- A Ph.D. student who has a close gay friend; male, mid-20s
I hope to learn from the interviews to find out what interests them to read and what does not, and if the story is logically presented. I also want to obtain feedback on if there’s any information they expect to see in the story but I failed to include it. Based on the questions listed below, I will make changes to improve my story and data visualizations.
User Interviews and Findings
The interview questions and direct quotes from the interviews are documented in the table below.
| Questions | Bisexual | LGBTQ Supporter | Individual with a close LGBTQ friend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Are you aware of the topic before you read the story? Do you find anything new to you from the story? | Yes. The approval rate by district and demographics is new to me. | Yes. The influence of Taiwan’s same-sex marriage legalization on other countries in Asia would be new to me. | Yes. World Pride 2025 and the demographics scatter plots are new to me. |
| What do you think the purpose of the story is? | To show the progress of LGBTQ rights in Taiwan, and try to influence other countries/encourage LGBTQ individuals in other countries. | To show support for LGBTQ community, making them feel comfortable with being themselves. | To advertise Taiwan is hosting World Pride 2025 |
| Do you feel the story is clear in terms of the order of the contents? If not, what makes you feel confused? | I think it’s clear. | I am confused with the labels/units for x- and y-axis of the scatter plots. | Yes, pretty clear. |
| Do the visualizations make sense to you? Do you feel they are aligned with the storyline? | Yes. | Yes. | Yes. I like the scatter plots, giving me much new information. |
| Is there anything missing but you expected to see in the story? | The agree and disagree in non-government organizations. | Would like to see more discussion on how NPOs are showing support for LGBTQ rights, what triggers people to turn their minds? | No, I think the content is complete for me. |
| Is there anything you want to add, delete, and/or change? | The explanation of why Same-sex marriage can still be legalized while the referendum was vetoed. (Or is it included in “How did Taiwan overcome the backlash and……” part?) | I’d start the LGBTQ history timeline with the first “rejection” of marriage registration. This should be a strong start to tell the rest of the story (timeline). And I feel in the section of legalization in 2019, I’d want to see more on who is supporting LGBTQ in comparison to what you have in the previous section (who rejected same-sex marriage). | The color scheme of all visualizations can be consistent. |
▍Changes Based on User Feedback
I plan to make the following changes in response to the interview findings.
- I will make the “hook” section more like a “hook” rather than the main idea to prevent the readers from feeling confused with the topic.
- I will make the axis labels, ticks, description of the scatter plots clearer.
- I will add deeper discussions to explain why Same-sex marriage can still be legalized while the referendum was vetoed, and how Taiwan’s legalization affect other countries in Asia.
- I will do more research on the LGBTQ history timeline to add more detail that might interest the readers.
- I will develop all the data visualization with a consistent color scheme.
PART III - FINAL DATA STORY
In part III of my final project, I completed all the final deliverables including this final documentation on Github, a final data story report on Shorthand, and a presentation given in the Telling Stories with Data class.
Design Reflection
▍Changes to the Visualizations & Intended Audience
After receiving feedback from my user research interviewees, the TA, and the instructor, I made a number of changes to the visualization and the story.
On the data visualization side, I made the following changes.
- Turn timeline graph into plain text. I shared the wireframes with other friends before I started creating data visualizations, and I got a lot of negative feedback on the timeline graph which I had seen valuable information to learn in the story. According to the users, the timeline was just a wall of texts to them, so why not turn them into plain texts and keep the most interesting/important part. I agreed with them. Furthermore, I reflected on what my story should stand for – not a wikipedia, but a story with incorporated information.
- Scatter Plots. I spent a great amount of time cleaning the scatter plots, which are one of the most important highlights of my story. I added the trend lines to further showcase the correlation between the approval of legalization and the demographics data (e.g. age, income, etc)
- Consistent color scheme. I picked two colors - dark and light purple - to incorporate all my visualizations as well as the web page.
On the storytelling side, I made the following changes.
- Sequence of context. I moved the hook to the end of the story to not make the audience confused with the project topic. I also found this reasonable since it would be difficult to understand the intention if I put a news headline saying “Taiwan is to host World Pride 2025” right after the cover page on the web page.
- More research. I added deeper discussions to explain why Same-sex marriage can still be legalized while the referendum was vetoed, and how Taiwan’s legalization affects other countries in Asia.
- Reflection on the intended audience. As I prepared for the final presentation, I got a little feedback on the vague call to action. So I tried to think back on who the intended audience is, and what I wanted them to feel or to do after reading my story. My answer is, I don’t want them to do any real “physical” actions. Instead, I wish they feel encouraged by Taiwan’s story and they’d have a belief that their time will come.
▍Design Decisions
Overall, I realized how valuable the user feedback is. Everytime I iterated a new version of the project, I received a bunch of feedback that I could have never thought of myself. As an individual who has been working with data visualization for quite a long time, this is, however, my first time doing visualizations from a story teller’s view. Surprisingly, this can be linked back to what I hope to learn at the very beginning of the class: I hope to learn a more design-oriented perspective to data visualization that I can add another level on my work.