12 respondents, some did not answer all questions
Section 2: Qualitative/Written response
For most of these I sorted responses into groups with similar answers, with the criteria for what was relevant depending on each question and my hypothesis.
Describe what is happening in the animation:
Audience summaries were similar between videos, with a couple respondents literally replying with variations of "same as before but...". However, the specific language changed, with every response (100%) for Video B characterising the big triangle as being angry or disciplinary compared to 2 (17%) in Video A. Evidently, B was more effective in communicating emotion to an audience.
What is the main message of the animation?
Responses varied from specific 'Don’t play catch inside' to general 'Your actions can have consequences'. The two 'unsure' respondents for Video A didn't identify a message but understood the story. In Video B, one said again they were unsure of the message and the other said they didn't think there was one; both respondents described B as more emotional.
Despite describing the events of Videos A and B similarly, the responses to this question show the audience identified the idea of a consequence to an action more in Video B (as hypothesised).
What is the purpose of the animation?
Again, pretty similar. Multiple people figured out and commented that the abstraction/simplicity of the animation was part of its purpose, and some commented that Video B was more emotional (see word clouds below). One of the responses in the 'other' class for Video B was literally '[the purpose is] To show how little is needed to change the emotions evoked by a simple, short, and abstract animation' which is the big thing I wanted to improve from Video A. (That being said, the second 'other' response for B was 'To teach children about the function and praxis of western police institutions' so I guess not everyone was on the same page.)
The word clouds show an increase in emotional and personifying language in response to Video B.
The animation would make more sense if...*
*For answers with multiple suggestions, I treated each as its own response, hence why Video A has more data. 'Actionable' here means permitted by the restrictions of the assessment.
From these results, it's pretty evident the audience found the alterations to Video B made it easier to understand. For the actionable advice from Video B, both were about the characters looking like "they leave from the roof". I wasn't quite sure how to translate perspective in something that couldn't have the appearance of depth or detail, but I tried my best in Video C. The same two respondents commented similar advice after Video A, with most of the other replies were about making the triangles emote more. The only other actionable advice was a change to the 'story', which was not repeated after Video B.