A User-centered Design Study in Scientific Visualization Targeting Domain Experts

TL;DR

This paper details a two-year user-centered design study collaborating with combustion scientists to develop effective scientific visualization tools, emphasizing the importance of involving users throughout the process.

Contribution

It demonstrates the application of user-centered design principles in scientific visualization, resulting in new in situ visualization and PDF exploration tools, with lessons learned for future collaborations.

Findings

Development of in situ visualization technique

Creation of a PDF exploration tool

Lessons on effective user involvement

Abstract

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.