A Didactic Methodology for Crafting Information Visualizations

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Mandy Keck, Rainer Groh, Zana Vosough

 External link (DOI) 

 View presentation:Thursday, October 29th, 2020 @ 14:30GMT+00:00Change your timezone on the schedule page
5 years agoYour current time: Saturday, Jul 12th @ 12:01

Exemplar figure — Our proposed didactic methodology for designing interactive visualizations includes several teaching activities that educate students during the conceptual phase of the design process. We follow divergent and convergent strategies with support from worksheets and stickers that motivates designing several low-fidelity prototypes, discussing pros and cons of each in groups, and improving the final solution by incorporating visual and perceptual principles. Our approach can assist students and anyone interested in crafting, ranking, and improving new visualization solutions.

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Direct link to video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/WPFM8MuWCpw

Keywords

Didactic Methodology, Creativity Method, Construction Kit, Visual Encodings, Gestalt Principles

Abstract

Finding or creating the right information visualization solution that meets design goals can be a very challenging task, not only for students but also for visualization experts. In this paper, we introduce a didactic methodology for designing interactive visualizations through hands-on activities. Our approach can assist students and anyone interested in crafting, ranking, and improving new visualization solutions. The suggested approach follows divergent and convergent thinking that motivates designing several low-fidelity prototypes, discussing pros and cons of each in groups, and improving the final solution by incorporating visual and perceptual principles. The methodology is described with teaching course examples for undergraduate and graduate students. We also list observations made when applying the methodology online and offline along with gathered student feedback.