The development and design of visualization solutions that are truly usable is essential for ensuring both their adoption and effectiveness. User-centered design principles, which focus on involving users throughout the entire development process, are well suited for visualization and have been shown to be effective in numerous information visualization endeavors. In this paper, we report a two year long collaboration with combustion scientists that, by applying these design principles, generated multiple results including an in situ visualization technique and a post hoc probability distribution function (PDF) exploration tool. Furthermore, we examine the importance of user-centered design principles and describe lessons learned over the design process in an effort to aid others who also seek to work with scientists for developing effective and usable scientific visualization solutions.
The information visualization community has been utilizing user-centered design processes and developing guidelines for design studies. @cite_37 presented a methodological framework for conducting design studies. They based the guidelines and pitfalls presented on the authors' combined experiences and an extensive literature review. Lloyd and Dykes @cite_52 provided invaluable recommendations on how to incorporate user-centered design in developing geo-visualizations by presenting the experiences they gained from multiple cases in a long-term study. Similar works have also been presented to share the experiences of adopting a user-centered design process @cite_1 @cite_0 @cite_56 . On a finer granularity, in @cite_18 aimed to specifically analyze how to better establish requirements in real-world visualization projects. These works have done an effective job of promoting user-centered design, as more and more works in information visualization @cite_2 @cite_19 @cite_24 @cite_8 @cite_33 have adopted the idea.
@cite_37 @cite_18 @cite_33 @cite_8 @cite_1 @cite_52 @cite_56 @cite_0 @cite_19 @cite_24 @cite_2
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We enhance a user-centered design process with techniques that deliberately promote creativity to identify opportunities for the visualization of data generated by a major energy supplier. Visualization prototypes developed in this way prove effective in a situation whereby data sets are largely unknown and requirements open - enabling successful exploration of possibilities for visualization in Smart Home data analysis. The process gives rise to novel designs and design metaphors including data sculpting. It suggests: that the deliberate use of creativity techniques with data stakeholders is likely to contribute to successful, novel and effective solutions; that being explicit about creativity may contribute to designers developing creative solutions; that using creativity techniques early in the design process may result in a creative approach persisting throughout the process. The work constitutes the first systematic visualization design for a data rich source that will be increasingly important to energy suppliers and consumers as Smart Meter technology is widely deployed. It is novel in explicitly employing creativity techniques at the requirements stage of visualization design and development, paving the way for further use and study of creativity methods in visualization design. Involving analysts in visualisation design has obvious benefits, but the knowledge-gap between domain experts ('analysts') and visualisation designers ('designers') often makes the degree of their involvement fall short of that aspired. By promoting a culture of mutual learning, understanding and contribution between both analysts and designers from the outset, participants can be raised to a level at which all can usefully contribute to both requirement definition and design. We describe the process we use to do this for tightly-scoped and short design exercises -- with meetings workshops, iterative bursts of design prototyping over relatively short periods of time, and workplace-based evaluation -- illustrating this with examples of our own experience from recent work with bird ecologists. Working with three domain specialists we investigate human-centered approaches to geovisualization following an ISO13407 taxonomy covering context of use, requirements and early stages of design. Our case study, undertaken over three years, draws attention to repeating trends: that generic approaches fail to elicit adequate requirements for geovis application design; that the use of real data is key to understanding needs and possibilities; that trust and knowledge must be built and developed with collaborators. These processes take time but modified human-centred approaches can be effective. A scenario developed through contextual inquiry but supplemented with domain data and graphics is useful to geovis designers. Wireframe, paper and digital prototypes enable successful communication between specialist and geovis domains when incorporating real and interesting data, prompting exploratory behaviour and eliciting previously unconsidered requirements. Paper prototypes are particularly successful at eliciting suggestions, especially for novel visualization. Enabling specialists to explore their data freely with a digital prototype is as effective as using a structured task protocol and is easier to administer. Autoethnography has potential for framing the design process. We conclude that a common understanding of context of use, domain data and visualization possibilities are essential to successful geovis design and develop as this progresses. HC approaches can make a significant contribution here. However, modified approaches, applied with flexibility, are most promising. We advise early, collaborative engagement with data - through simple, transient visual artefacts supported by data sketches and existing designs - before moving to successively more sophisticated data wireframes and data prototypes. Domain Analysis for Data Visualization (DADV) is a technique to use when investigating a domain where data visualizations are going to be designed and added to existing software systems. DADV was used to design the data visualization in VisEIO-LCA, which is a framework to visualize environmental data about products. Most of the visualizations are designed using the following stages: formatting data in tables, selecting visual structures, and rendering the data on the screen. Although many visualization authors perform implicit domain analysis, in this paper domain analysis is added explicitly to the process of designing visualizations with the goal of producing move usable software tools. Environmental Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used as a test bed for this technique. An adaptive bit synchronizer is operable to extract digital data and its associated clock from a transmitted digital signal, and includes a tunable matched filter set for modifying the input signal to correct for deviations in offset and gain, which filter set includes data, transition and derivative matched filters. A sampling device samples the output of the data matched filter for making bit decision and for estimating the reliability thereof. A clock-producing device is connected with the matched filter set for producing at least two clocks, use being made of an optimum phase detector for estimating the time error between the proper clock edge and the actual clock edges. A loop filter circuit smooths the estimates of the proper clock time to generate clock signals, and a device responsive to the average square error of the clock signals varies the loop parameters of the loop filter means to minimize average square phase error.