"It's a Good Idea to Put It Into Words": Writing `Rudders' in the Initial Stages of Visualization Design

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Stokes, Chase, Hu, Clara, Hearst, Marti A.
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2024
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author Stokes, Chase
Hu, Clara
Hearst, Marti A.
author_facet Stokes, Chase
Hu, Clara
Hearst, Marti A.
contents Written language is a useful tool for non-visual creative activities like writing essays and planning searches. This paper investigates the integration of written language in to the visualization design process. We create the idea of a 'writing rudder,' which acts as a guiding force or strategy for the design. Via an interview study of 24 working visualization designers, we first established that only a minority of participants systematically use writing to aid in design. A second study with 15 visualization designers examined four different variants of written rudders: asking questions, stating conclusions, composing a narrative, and writing titles. Overall, participants had a positive reaction; designers recognized the benefits of explicitly writing down components of the design and indicated that they would use this approach in future design work. More specifically, two approaches - writing questions and writing conclusions/takeaways - were seen as beneficial across the design process, while writing narratives showed promise mainly for the creation stage. Although concerns around potential bias during data exploration were raised, participants also discussed strategies to mitigate such concerns. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between language and visualization, and proposes a straightforward, lightweight addition to the visualization design process.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_15959
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle "It's a Good Idea to Put It Into Words": Writing `Rudders' in the Initial Stages of Visualization Design
Stokes, Chase
Hu, Clara
Hearst, Marti A.
Human-Computer Interaction
H.5.0
Written language is a useful tool for non-visual creative activities like writing essays and planning searches. This paper investigates the integration of written language in to the visualization design process. We create the idea of a 'writing rudder,' which acts as a guiding force or strategy for the design. Via an interview study of 24 working visualization designers, we first established that only a minority of participants systematically use writing to aid in design. A second study with 15 visualization designers examined four different variants of written rudders: asking questions, stating conclusions, composing a narrative, and writing titles. Overall, participants had a positive reaction; designers recognized the benefits of explicitly writing down components of the design and indicated that they would use this approach in future design work. More specifically, two approaches - writing questions and writing conclusions/takeaways - were seen as beneficial across the design process, while writing narratives showed promise mainly for the creation stage. Although concerns around potential bias during data exploration were raised, participants also discussed strategies to mitigate such concerns. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between language and visualization, and proposes a straightforward, lightweight addition to the visualization design process.
title "It's a Good Idea to Put It Into Words": Writing `Rudders' in the Initial Stages of Visualization Design
topic Human-Computer Interaction
H.5.0
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.15959