Article in question: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-19/australia-bushfires-how-heat-and-drought-created-a-tinderbox/11976134

Interaction Design

The project is presented as a single scrolling news article as opposed to a

multiple page article, with images making the background of the article that move in time with the viewer’s scrolling to provide a visualisation of the bushfire as it occured. Text in the story broken into smaller paragraphs and quotes with large amounts of seperation for the visuals behind to be made visible, alongside the changes the visuals undergo as the article progresses.

The text in the project is block white text on seperate black boxes serving as a backdrop, with breaks and seperations to reveal the background graphics althroughout, information and quotes provided pointedly and in short bursts to enhance the brevity and intensity of events within the article, as well as longer blocks of text for longer quotes and analysis of the event beyond the dramatic punches.

The majority of background images are satellite imagery of the areas affected by the bushfires, allowing the viewer’s scrolling through the article to visually demonstrate the scale and the spread of the fire’s impact across large areas of the country. Images that also move and change as the reader scrolls through the material.Beyond just the initial spread of the bushfires, also using imagery from years prior of the areas to visualise the real damage that the fires have caused. Sprinkled throughout as well are images of fire crews, people, houses and towns involved in the blaze as well, presenting human and relatable imagery in top of the information to show the real personal impact upon those affected in the fires, in time with quotes and accounts of the events that transpired. Visuals of burned landscapes, signs and trees, satellite weather imagery of the clouds of smoke caused by the fire running across Australia and finishing with imagery of the floods that followed in the wake of the bushfires, all revealed gradually as the article is read through.

Storytelling

The story is told as an emotive yet informative piece. Making use of long descriptive words and recounts of the events that occured woven together like a narrative story, with heavy adjective use and powerful references to imagery. Weaving in together facts and figures surrounding the causes and effects of the bushfire, personal accounts and interviews of people involved in the fires, alongside an overall sombre and reflective tone. Heavy uses of descriptive words to paint the image of the events in the readers heads, as well as providing all the relevant information of the artive. The progression of the narrative following from an emotive introduction to the topic at hand, then following chronologically along with the events leading up to the bushfires then detailing the impact it had immediately and into the future.

The article conveys this narrative through text, but also makes use of scrolling imagery along the webpage, some moving in time with the reader’s scrolling, to provide additional information and context that reinforces the narrative being told.

Interviews within this story are placed mostly within sections of the article without the use of scrolling images, parts with the white text simply on a black background. Done so for the interviews to be highlighted and focused on for its information and content without the imagery to serve as a kind of distraction for the discussion at hand. Interview quotes from experts incorporated as a way of being able to provide context and information to the tragedy, beyond the imagery and spectacle of the events.

Reading through this article, I really grasped a stronger idea of just the kind of devastation and effect the bushfires in 2019. As well as that, the how and why of these events occuring as well as the stories of those people affected by it, and the continued story of those areas and its people.