# WonderFlow: Narration-Centric Design of Animated Data Videos

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04040 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.04040/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Aug 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [WaitGPT: Monitoring and Steering Conversational LLM Agent in Data Analysis with On-the-Fly Code Visualization](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.01703/) (2024)
- [From Data to Story: Towards Automatic Animated Data Video Creation with LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2408.03876/) (2024)
- [Where Are We So Far? Understanding Data Storytelling Tools from the Perspective of Human-AI Collaboration](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15723/) (2023)
- [OpusAnimation: Code-Based Dynamic Chart Generation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.03341/) (2025)
- [Reflection on Data Storytelling Tools in the Generative AI Era from the Human-AI Collaboration Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.02631/) (2025)
- [Speech-Synchronized Whiteboard Generation via VLM-Driven Structured Drawing Representations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.25870/) (2026)
- [DATAREEL: Automated Data-Driven Video Story Generation with Animations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2604.25220/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Creating an animated data video enriched with audio narration takes a significant amount of time and effort and requires expertise. Users not only need to design complex animations, but also turn written text scripts into audio narrations and synchronize visual changes with the narrations. This paper presents WonderFlow, an interactive authoring tool, that facilitates narration-centric design of animated data videos. WonderFlow allows authors to easily specify a semantic link between text and the corresponding chart elements. Then it automatically generates audio narration by leveraging text-to-speech techniques and aligns the narration with an animation. WonderFlow provides a visualization structure-aware animation library designed to ease chart animation creation, enabling authors to apply pre-designed animation effects to common visualization components. It also allows authors to preview and iteratively refine their data videos in a unified system, without having to switch between different creation tools. To evaluate WonderFlow's effectiveness and usability, we created an example gallery and conducted a user study and expert interviews. The results demonstrated that WonderFlow is easy to use and simplifies the creation of data videos with narration-animation interplay.