Information Design Journal - Volume 27, Issue 1, 2022

This paper presents research on creating interactive prototypes for visualizing temporal spatial relationships in fictional literary texts. Developed within the context of the Chronotopic Cartographies project, a practice-led inquiry yielded dynamic visualizations from literary texts, the research explores the development and application of interactive three-dimensional environments illustrating the ‘chronotopic’, time-space relationships across a series of fictional literary texts. Expert feedback highlights the potential of the interaction model as a useful visual paradigm for supporting methods of reflective inquiry hypothesis making. The work also represents a potential model for creating interactive temporal visualizations which support hypothesis making across a broader sphere of the humanities.

Surprise Machines is a project of experimental museology that sets out to visualize the entire image collection of the Harvard Art Museums, with a view to opening up unexpected vistas on more than 200,000 objects usually inaccessible to visitors. The project is part of the exhibition organized by metaLAB (at) Harvard entitled Curatorial A(i)gents and explores the limits of artificial intelligence to display a large set of images and create surprise among visitors. To achieve this feeling of surprise, a choreographic interface was designed to connect the audience’s movement with several unique views of the collection.

This article introduces the Codices of The School of Huejotzingo as early examples of data visualization from sixteenth-century colonial México. The glyphs in the Codices and the technique of repetition are used to represent quantities. A similar approach was introduced four hundred years later in 1930s Vienna that would become known as Isotype. Similar to the Codices, Isotype used pictograms and repetition to represent quantities. A set of principles were established to design Isotype charts that were engaging and memorable. The Codices are analyzed using the principles of Isotype to contextualize and introduce them into the data visualization timeline.

Qualitative uncertainty refers to the implicit and underlying issues that are imbued in data, such as the circumstances of its collection, its storage or even biases and assumptions made by its authors. Although such uncertainty can jeopardize the validity of the data analysis, it is often overlooked in visualizations, due to it being indirect and non-quantifiable. In this paper we present two case studies within the digital humanities in which we examined how to integrate uncertainty in our visualization designs. Using these cases as a starting point we propose four considerations for data visualization research in relation to indirect, qualitative uncertainty: (1) we suggest that uncertainty in visualization should be examined within its socio-technological context, (2) we propose the use of interaction design patterns to design for it, (3) we argue for more attention to be paid to the data generation process in the humanities, and (4) we call for the further development of participatory activities specifically catered for understanding qualitative uncertainties. While our findings are grounded in the humanities, we believe that these considerations can be beneficial for other settings where indirect uncertainty plays an equally prevalent role.

Critical studies of data visualization often highlight how the reductive nature of visualization methods excludes data limitations and qualities that are crucial to understanding those data. This case study explores how a data visualization could express contingent, situated, and contextual facets of data. We examine how such data limitations might be surfaced and represented within visualizations through an interplay between the critique of an existing data visualization and the development of alternative designs. Based on a case study of urban tree data, we interrogate data limitations in relation to four different types of missingness: Incompleteness, Emptiness, Absence, and Nothingness. Our study enables reflections on how data limitations can be investigated using visualizations and considers the development of a critical visualization practice.

Data visualization frequently provides audiences with novel semantic and computational presentations. How does a multifaceted team expand this scope by harnessing the power of visualization as a tool to think with? The NASA JPL/Caltech/ ArtCenter data visualization program demonstrates how scientific knowledge, shaped from data and theory, is equally co-constructed from diverse human perspectives. We will share case studies from Mars Rover Path planning and PIXLISE, a visual reasoning tool for understanding planetary geology. Working from source data through mixed media artifacts, these projects explore co-design methods for complex scientific domains with real-world applications. Our methodology emphasizes that all participants in the co-design process are both learners and experts. In this dynamic, the design and coding process are unique modes of critical discovery.

This paper considers whether scientists can improve their visual design abilities by participating in critiques. In design education, a critique is a class session where designers present their work-in-progress and receive feedback from faculty, peers, and invited critics. In this study, we show that an intervention consisting of (1) an introduction to visual principles, (2) an explanation of critique methodology, and (3) participation in a group critique led to a significant increase in both the quantity and quality of feedback that scientists provided on a set of figures. These findings indicate that critiques can be a valuable practice for scientists to integrate into their research labs.

In recent years, scrollytelling – a method to animate content as a reader scrolls through an article – has become an integral part of online visual storytelling. Despite its popularity, few studies have examined the variety of existing scrollytelling techniques. In addition, scrollytelling is still costly to produce. This study aims to generate a scrollytelling vocabulary for newsrooms and creative agencies. By analysing 50 examples, we have identified granular characteristics of scrollytelling elements, or ‘scrollers’, and grouped them into five standard techniques: graphic sequences, animated transitions, panning and zooming, scrolling through movies, and showing and auto-playing animated content. The study provides information designers, developers, and visual journalists with a vocabulary to experiment with different scrollytelling techniques and implement scrollers faster and more easily.

The case study describes the process of designing an interactive visualisation tool to help people understand the likelihood of Covid-19 transmission in different situations. This visualisation was created as part of a 13 month long collaborative project between scientific experts from a UK government advisory group, and a multimedia team at The BMJ (British Medical Journal). The data underpinning the graphic was collected from 27 experts via a knowledge elicitation study. It includes discussion of lessons learned about collecting and visualising uncertain data, and the benefits of user testing.

This paper summarises a cross-disciplinary project that explored ways of making instructions, funded as part of the UK COVID-19 rapid-response initiative. The project explored ways of making instructions for COVID-19 Lateral Flow Tests easy for lay people to use. Our method comprised rapid design decision making, where we used existing research, good practice in information design and consultation with diagnostic experts as part of the design process. Iterative review by a panel of users informed the development of prototype instructions: small studies investigated user preference for diagrams, and gathered feedback on the graphic articulation of the procedural steps involved in carrying out the test.