Designer x Journalist
Taipei, Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan
I’m a journalist, telling stories through text and multimedia.
In the past 2 years, I wrote more than 100 reports and designing digital works of them.
60% of prisons in Taiwan were faced with the predicament of overcrowding. The worst overcrowding took place at Taoyuan Prison, which housed over 50% more inmates
than the approved capacity.
Taking in more inmates than legally approved not only violates human rights, but goes against the goals of rehabilitation and correction. Forced to live in horrible conditions in prison, inmates are more likely to engage in criminal activities after returning to society, which leads to more recidivism.
The multimedia project "Room for Remorse" analyzes the negative effects of
prison overcrowding upon inmates, prison workers and the entire society, and also
discusses the causes of overcrowding and possible solutions.
Given that a wide range of data was used in the report, I chose to tell the story with interactive infographics to present information in a more accessible way.
Aside from interactive infographics, I also constructed a virtual reality model of the actual prison cell based on interviews with prison workers, helping viewers to experience the inferior living condition faced by inmates.
As Deuze(2005) points out, the production, transmission and reception of digital news involve multiple new media technologies, which are different from traditional media in terms of function. New media technologies usually combine text, video and graphics to make a “story package” in one web interface, which is also called “Convergence Continuum”.
Room for Remorse is a package of text, infographics, 360 video and VR. The landing page shows 8 articles, as well as infographics and VR button on nav-bar for easy access to other parts of the project.
As Oh & Sundar(2015) points out, Modality Interactivity means the diversity of tools and forms in interactive interfaces, including actions like Sliders, Mouse-overs and Zoom Feature. Oh & Sundar argue that Modality Interactivity helps web users become more immersed in their browsing behavior. When they perform “Sliders”, they need to move their mouses, which makes users’ brains accept, respond to and finally absorb the information instead of just reading through passively.
The webpage that features infographics utilizes scrolling to guide viewers through 4 aspects of overcrowding: current state, impacts, causes, and solutions. I used a wide range of visual elements such as infographics and illustrations to present data in more engaging ways.
For better user experience on mobile devices, the project adopts the Responsive Web Design (RWD).
To strengthen “Modality Interactivity”, all infographics are designed to fade in through mouse-moves.
First, I use maps and charts to describe the overall overcrowding situation in 2016.
Then I provide a quick international comparison of imprisonment rate and accommodation rate among Asian countries.
To help viewers compare the overcrowding rates of all the prisons in Taiwan in a more intuitive way, I made area charts to show the difference between the space each prisoner actually occupies with the space approved by law.
These two charts show that half of the inmates were sentenced to incarceration for drug offenses, and the recidivism rate of drug-related offenses is also higher than the average level. These charts are designed to answer the question of what are the major causes of prison overcrowding.
To introduce the government officials, experts, prison workers I interviewed for the project, I designed their profile images with their respective quote lines, giving readers a quick summary of the main themes of each article.
Immersive Journalism is a narrative mode that lets viewers experience certain news events through First-Person Perspective (1PP).
Immersive journalists use panoramic cameras to capture scenes and sound to build 3D models. They also add avatars and interactive materials to the virtual environment. Finally, with the help of a virtual reality device, the original scene is presented to viewers in its most original form. More than imagining what happened through second-hand sources, viewers now can experience the whole story by themselves.
To present the living environment of 17 prisoners squeezed in a prison cell designed for 8 inmates with the highest precision, I consulted with prison guard Wen-Wei Lin of I-Lan prison and Graham Roberts from the VR team of New York Times. Given that VR gadgets would be unavailable to most viewers, the project provides two formats for the immersive section: the 360 video version and the VR version.
To watch 360 video, users can click the video on Youtube, or use Google Cardboard to immerse themselves. Considering that the viewing angle is fixed in the 360 video, I placed 5 observation spots in the project.
To experience virtual reality, users need to use VR software like Steam VR and wear devices like HTC VIVE, Gear VR or Play Station VR. They can try to walk in prison space, and change their positions by themselves, experiencing what it is like to live in a tiny space, with roommates laying on the floor and nearly no spare room for walking.
After watching 360 video or VR, viewers can have a more vivid idea of life in overcrowded prison and approach the issue from the prisoners’ perspective.
Screenshot of 360 video
Sketchup draft
A special focus is on user experience, with inputs from my classmates and friends regarding the user experience of the VR model. The model was thus modified multiple times according to those feedbacks.
In the past, without the resource enjoyed by peers living in major cities like Taipei, it could be difficult for students living in rural areas to enter National Taiwan University, the most prestigious higher education institution in Taiwan. In order to narrow the gap between rich students and poor students, The Taiwaneses government unveils a new admission program called “Star Plan” 10 years ago, providing equal opportunities for entering higher education institutions to students regardless of socioeconomic backgrounds.
Through this program, students from humble origins applying for top-rated universities will be evaluated based on their grades and merits in prior education without submitting standardized test scores.
Star Plan has been in place for a decade. Does it really help to alleviate education inequality across the whole country? how did Star Plan students perform in prestigious universities? The project "Who Can Get into NTU?" tried to answer all the questions through data and graphics.
I used line chart, illustration graphics, javascript effect like mouse-overs, mouse-moves, to show information about Star Plan students, such as how many students enter higher education through Star Plan, how many NTU students are from Star Plan, and how Star Plan students perform academically in college.
This transforms dry data into engaging graphics and charts, and viewers would be more likely to understand what Star Plan policy has achieved in recent years.
Firstly, I explained the differences between Star Plan and other admission programs.
I then used a line chart to show the rising popularity of Star Plan among students. The fade-in image is designed to have a visual impact upon readers.
I borrowed the concept of “scales” to help explain to readers the fact that the urban/rural ratio of NTU students from Star Plan is nearly equal. The blue image represents the percentage of the student from Taipei while the green one represents the percentage of students from the rural area.
The interactive graphics showed the number of different high schools in which Star Plan students in NTU received their secondary education. Readers can easily discern the increase through animated effect triggered by mouse scrolling. Overall, the two graphics above showed that Star Plan has improved social equality and justice in the education system.
Through a few mouse clicks, users can find out that the academic performance of Star Plan students is much better than students who were admitted through the other channels, regardless of being at NTU or other universities.
Zero animal euthanasia policy has been in place in Taiwan since 2017. However, ensuing overcrowding in animal shelters keeps putting pressure on the animal protection system. To solve the problem, animal shelters run more campaigns to promote adoption. But instead of receiving decent care, some adopted animals fell into the hands of mean adopters and led tragic lives. Is Taiwan really prepared for zero animal euthanasia? Through data, I tried to tell an engaging story about the policy.
The making of the project covers a wide range of media production skills, including research, interview, graphic design and animation.
I used Adobe After Effects to produce the animation, in which I highlighted the number of animals accommodated in shelters in each county, human headcounts of shelters, and the adoption ratio of animals in shelters. Coupled with illustration and graphics, the animation transformed the complex issue to bite-sized graphics, helping viewers to know more about living conditions of stray animals in Taiwan.
CakeResume is One of the most popular resume making services in Taiwan. I designed visual content for social media use, which usually included simple graphics and illustrations.
I was invited to the exhibition of designers who learn digital skills by themselves. I chose to design posters for famous movies in experimental and abstract styles.
I made the banner of Taiwan YouTuber Charlie's channel, which has over 400,000 fans.
