Bringing futures scenarios to life with video animation: a case of disseminating research to nonexpert audiences

In social science, researchers are often confronted with large amounts of data generated through qualitative methods such as interviews, interpretive narration, and oral history. While selecting an appropriate form of communicating the findings at the end of a research project is every research’s obligation, the dissemination of key insights gained from academic research, and presenting these in other formats that effectively extend the research results and new knowledge gained to nonexpert audiences, is many times forgotten. The purpose of this research is to address this gap in the literature by answering the question of how to communicate futures scenarios to nonexpert audiences, corporate decision-makers, and their staff using video animation as a medium. The process presented in this paper is based on a use case in which academics and designers, at a design school, took the findings of a financial services futures study and applied storytelling and visualization techniques to bring futures scenarios to life with video animation.