Collaborative Research: HCC: Small: Bridging Research and Visualization Design Practice via a Sustainable Knowledge Platform

该项目旨在帮助使可视化实践与围绕可视化有效性的最先进的实证研究保持一致。这种一致性至关重要，因为政府、商业、工程和新闻业等部门的广泛专业人员正在采用数据可视化来分析与社会问题相关的数据。然而，他们的数据分析和可视化工作往往没有得到实证研究的充分了解。设计师通常是自学成才的，而以实践者为中心的设计指南往往得不到有效性的经验证据的证实，而且来自不同的来源，有时甚至是不一致的。通常，这些来源不是研究人员；尽管已经做出了一些努力来开发研究支持的指南和可视化工具，但总的来说，研究界并没有做出协调一致的努力，使其结果可供从业者使用。这反过来又会导致不那么有效的可视化，从而损害决策和公众理解。该项目旨在通过建立一个全面的平台来改善获取和学习有效可视化设计的机会，并促进知情的、基于证据的设计实践，以弥合这一知识鸿沟。该项目围绕三个研究主题组织。第一个推力将通过考察设计实践和实证研究的现状来探索知识差距。该项目将调查现有指南的全貌，收集更多和更不准确和更容易获得的可视化实例的数据集，并分析这些指南和可视化与实证研究所知的重叠和差异。这种对人工制品的分析将通过对从业者和研究人员的采访来补充，他们重点关注他们在知识转移方面的实践和挑战。第二个重点将整合数据收集和分析，以开发一个支撑可视化设计知识的本体论框架，以及一个基于知识的平台，人们可以在这个平台上浏览、讨论和维护不断演变的指南、经验证据和相关可视化实例的列表。最后的推力将超越知识管理，转向生产和传播。该项目将使用公民科学的方法来调查现实世界可视化中未探索的设计空间，这些可视化涉及典型经验研究中缺失的设计元素。该平台还将提供编程接口，以支持智能设计助理和教育评估工具等新颖的外部应用程序。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project aims to help align visualization practice with state-of-the-art empirical research around visualization effectiveness. This alignment is critical because a wide range of professionals in sectors including government, business, engineering, and journalism are adopting data visualizations for data analysis connected to social issues. However, their data analysis and visualization work is often not well-informed by empirical research. Designers are often self-taught, while practitioner-focused design guidelines are often not substantiated by empirical evidence of their effectiveness and come from different and sometimes inconsistent sources. Often, those sources are not researchers; although there have been some efforts to develop research-backed guidelines and visualization tools, on balance, the research community has not made a concerted effort to make its results usable for practitioners. This, in turn, leads to less effective visualizations that can harm both decision-making and public understanding. This project aims to bridge this knowledge gap by building a comprehensive platform for improving access to and learning about effective visualization design and promoting informed, evidence-based design practice.The project is organized around three research thrusts. The first thrust will explore the knowledge gap by examining the current state of design practice and empirical research. The project will survey the landscape of existing guidelines, collect a dataset of more and less accurate and accessible visualization examples, and analyze overlaps and discrepancies of these guidelines and visualizations with what is known from empirical research studies. This analysis of artifacts will be complemented by interviews with practitioners and researchers that focus on the practices and challenges they have around knowledge transfer. The second thrust will consolidate the data collection and analysis to develop an ontological framework for scaffolding visualization design knowledge, along with a knowledge-based platform where people can browse, discuss, and maintain an evolving list of guidelines, empirical evidence, and relevant visualization examples. The final thrust will go beyond knowledge management to production and dissemination. The project will employ a citizen science approach to investigate the unexplored design space in real-world visualizations that involve design elements absent in typical empirical studies. The platform will also provide a programming interface to enable novel external applications such as intelligent design assistants and educational assessment tools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.