Science animations to bridge communication obstacles to laymen and experts – a story of struggles and solutions

As scientists, we spend our time developing new methodologies and innovative strategies to answer the knowledge gaps in our fields. Communicating this to peers is a familiar process that contains its own set of unique challenges, but communication to non-peers, including the wider public but also researchers from other disciplines, is something many of us struggle with.

I am part of two vastly different disciplines; I use geo-electric techniques (1) to study active volcanic processes (2). We are a rather small group of people working on both, hence interdisciplinary communication poses an obstacle in both directions. A second challenge is the communication to a wider audience, which is especially relevant in a field like volcanology.

In my experience, the two are not mutually exclusive: a clear and concise understanding of the methodology is essential for colleagues from other fields to know how to interpret the results. This is also true for a wider public that is generally not satisfied with a final result but needs to grasp the why and how for our credibility as scientists. An additional problem I encounter is that people often have a glamorized notion of what a volcanic eruption entails, including fellow scientists, and while that is correct for some cases, the field contains so much more than the impressive lava spectacles. During the short time I have been active in academia, I have been faced with these issues on multiple occasions and wanted to tackle them in a visual way, as many people, including myself, are visual learners. I needed to find a way to tackle this visualization obstacle, but as a PhD student, I did not have an extensive network yet, so I decided to give it a shot myself.

From a young age, I have been an artistic person: always drawing, painting, journaling, or stitching, and I wanted to channel this creative outlet into my work as an academic. I had a vision, I had a skillset, but I quickly realized that translating that vision into something that can be used in this digital age was not as easy as it seemed, and acquiring the skills needed even less so. The forest of digital drawing and animation tools can be overwhelming, often has a steep learning curve, and without any formal education, it is hard to reach its full potential. I ended up following courses on digital drawing for scientific purposes and used the skillset I acquired there in all my communication efforts: from drawing conceptual models for papers, to creating eye-catching posters and infographics. I have found good and attractive visuals to be invaluable in scientific communication; they help peers and the public understand what we are doing and why, but also attract attention so your work can potentially reach a wider audience. I want to showcase this with some of my work, highlighting the animation I made illustrating how an Electrical Resistivity Tomography (ERT) measurement works, from field acquisition to the modelling and final result.