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

该项目旨在帮助将可视化实践与最先进的可视化有效性实证研究相结合。这种一致性至关重要，因为包括政府、商业、工程和新闻业在内的众多行业的专业人士都在采用数据可视化来进行与社会问题相关的数据分析。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支持。设计师往往是自学成才的，而以设计师为中心的设计准则往往没有得到其有效性的经验证据的证实，并且来自不同的，有时不一致的来源。通常，这些来源不是研究人员;虽然有一些努力，以开发研究支持的指导方针和可视化工具，总的来说，研究界还没有作出协调一致的努力，使其结果可供从业人员使用。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的理解。该项目旨在通过构建一个综合平台来弥补这一知识差距，以改善对有效可视化设计的访问和学习，并促进知情的、基于证据的设计实践。该项目围绕三个研究重点组织。第一个重点将通过检查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情况，收集更多和更少准确和可访问的可视化示例的数据集，并分析这些指南和可视化与实证研究中已知的重叠和差异。对人工制品的分析将通过对从业者和研究人员的访谈来补充，这些访谈侧重于他们在知识转移方面的实践和挑战。第二个推力将巩固数据收集和分析，以开发一个本体框架脚手架可视化设计知识，沿着一个基于知识的平台，人们可以浏览，讨论和维护一个不断发展的指南，经验证据和相关的可视化示例列表。最后的推动力将超越知识管理，涉及制作和传播。该项目将采用公民科学的方法来调查未开发的设计空间在现实世界的可视化，涉及设计元素缺乏典型的实证研究。该平台还将提供一个编程接口，以支持智能设计助手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知识价值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.