Data Visualization Design Practice

Data visualization design is becoming increasingly popular as a professional role. To promote the growth and sustainability of design professions, it is important for both research and education to have a good understanding of how designers think and do their work in practice. While visualization researchers have made a significant number of contributions regarding visualization design models, processes, and frameworks, most of this work has taken place in research rather than practice settings. 

In this line of research, we take a practice-led approach to studying data visualization design, attempting to expand scholarly inquiry beyond research settings into settings of everyday design practice. Topics under investigation include what kinds of design processes visualization practitioners follow, what kinds of strategies and methods they use, what cognitive processes and structures they rely on, and how they generate and use forms of design knowledge. 

Related Publications

2023

Parsons, Paul

Design Cognition in Data Visualization Book Chapter Forthcoming

In: Chen, Min; Szafir, Danielle Albers; Borgo, Rita; Padilla, Lace; Edwards, Darren J.; Fisher, Brian (Ed.): vol. Visualization Psychology, Springer, Forthcoming.

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2022

Parsons, Paul; Shukla, Prakash

Considering the Role of Guidelines in Visualization Design Practice Workshop

4th IEEE Workshop on Visualization Guidelines in Research, Design, and Education (VisGuides ’22), 2022.

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Shukla, Prakash; Parsons, Paul

Negotiating visualization minimalism: a preliminary analysis of Twitter conversations Workshop

in IEEE VIS Workshop on Visualization for Communication (VisComm ’22), 2022.

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2021

Parsons, Paul

Understanding Data Visualization Design Practice Journal Article

In: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (Proc. VIS ’21), vol. 28, no. 1, 2021.

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Parsons, Paul; Shukla, Prakash; Park, Chorong

Fixation and Creativity in Data Visualization Design: Experiences and Perspectives of Practitioners Conference

IEEE VIS Conference, Short Papers, 2021.

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2020

Parsons, Paul

How do Visualization Designers Think? Design Cognition as a Core Aspect of Visualization Psychology Workshop

IEEE VIS 2020 Workshop on Visualization Psychology (VisPsych), 2020.

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Parsons, Paul; Shukla, Prakash

Data Visualization Practitioners’ Perspectives on Chartjunk Conference

IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS), short papers, 2020.

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Parsons, Paul; Gray, Colin M.; Baigelenov, Ali; Carr, Ian

Design Judgment in Data Visualization Practice Conference

IEEE Visualization Conference (VIS), short papers, 2020.

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Parsons, Paul; Hung, Ya-Hsin; Baigelenov, Ali; Schrank, Connor

What Design Methods do DataVis Practitioners Know and Use? Conference

Extended Abstracts of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI LBW), ACM, Honolulu, HI, 2020.

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2018

Parsons, Paul; Hung, Ya-Hsin; Baigelenov, Ali

Toward an Analysis of Practitioner-Oriented Resources for Visualization Design Conference

IEEE VIS ’18: Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE Conference on Information Visualization, Poster Abstracts, Berlin, Germany, 2018.

Abstract | Links | BibTeX

2016

Sedig, Kamran; Parsons, Paul

Design of Visualizations for Human-Information Interaction: A Pattern-Based Framework Journal Article

In: Synthesis Lectures on Visualization, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 1–185, 2016, ISSN: 2159-516X.

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