Result Announcement: ODV’s Data-driven Storytelling Contest – Covid-19 Pandemic

In February – March 2021, Open Development Vietnam (ODV), in collaboration with SPIDER Center, organized the Data-driven Storytelling Contest, centering around the COVID-19 pandemic. The contest aimed to encourage professionals, researchers, and students, especially indigenous people, to demonstrate the value of data through compelling visual data storytelling and contribute to the open data community by increasing the accessibility of information on public services.

We have received multiple data stories from participants with various backgrounds and ages. Data stories have captured emerging issues about the pandemic, such as Covid-19 Vaccine, communication, unemployment, impacts on households’ income, and effects on women in Vietnam. They were delivered in a wide range of formats: infographic, articles, and interactive data visualizations.

The submitted stories are assessed by ODI’s judging panel, based on four criteria:

  1. Story Impact: Whether the story
  • is developed logically, can refer to 4 types of story structures: Impact, Problem, Cause, and Solution
  • is easy to follow and understand the message
  • delivers a complete message to the audience
  • has user-centered design
  1. Visual form (Originality and creativity): Whether the story
  • is easy to catch the message and information
  • uses diagrams that fit with data and story to tell
  • harmonizes between colors and consistent with the message conveyed in the text
  • uses clear highlight and annotation
  • encourage the audience to explore further with the visualization
  1. Information (Integrity):
  • Whether the story is based on data (either structured data or non-structured data). Data must be open for re-use and re-distribute for non-commercial purposes (if they are not retrieved from OD platforms).
  • Authors show in their work that they have performed: data collection (via reference list) and data processing/analysis.
  1. Function (Usefulness): We assess:
  • Will this story catch the attention of the Vietnamese audience in general and ODV’s audience in particular?
  • What can be improved in the story to get better attention?
  • Are there any actions called or solutions proposed in the story?

 In addition, the stories were given bonus points if using data available on ODV and ODM platforms. 

After careful consideration upon, we have selected the top three stories as winners:

We want to thank you all for your interest and submission for this data contest. This contribution helps to promote open data and data visualization for public use. 

In the coming time, ODV will continue to increase data literacy capacity and promote open data principles in different communities and organizations through our projects in Vietnam. ODV will also publish and share more data stories and visualization works on our platforms.