When Data Offers No Right Answer: Designing Failure in Serious Data Visualization Games
Authors
Yechun Peng (Tongji University), Qiushi He (Tongji University), Yiting Liu (Tongji University), Yang Shi (Tongji University)
Presentation
- Session
- How you show it makes a difference!
- Time
- Tuesday, Nov 10, 14:12 – 14:24 (US/Eastern) · session 13:00 – 14:30
- Location
- Hall Essex north
Keywords
Serious data visualization game, failure design, design space
Abstract
Serious data visualization games combine data visualization with gameplay to help people engage with complex societal issues. Many of the real-world problems represented in such games involve competing values and systemic constraints, where undesirable outcomes may arise even when players make well-informed decisions. In these contexts, failure reveals the limits and trade-offs of systems in which data offers no right answer. However, failure has rarely been treated as a design resource for communicating systemic complexity. In this work, we explore what constitutes failure in serious data visualization games and how it can be designed. Through a corpus-based analysis of 33 games in which failure plays a meaningful role, we conceptualize three forms of failure, Avoidable, Mitigable, and Inevitable, capturing how failure emerges from interactions between player actions and systemic constraints. We further analyze how failure unfolds in gameplay using a modified narrative framework inspired by the three-act structure: Failure Emergence, Failure Experience, and Failure Response. Building on this analysis, we derive a design space with seven dimensions that articulate key strategies for designing failure in serious data visualization games. A workshop with 22 participants shows the effectiveness of the design space in supporting diverse design explorations, enabling designers to create games that communicate systemic constraints and societal trade-offs through gameplay.
For Practitioners
This paper may interest serious game designers, data visualization practitioners, educators, data journalists, and civic technology designers who communicate complex social or systemic issues. Practitioners can use the failure typology and design space to intentionally shape how constraints emerge, how players experience their consequences, and how the system responds, thereby helping audiences understand trade-offs, structural limitations, and situations in which no ideal outcome is possible.