# Integrating Visualization Literacy into Computer Graphics Education Using the Example of Dear Data

## TL;DR

This paper presents a 12-week teaching approach that integrates design thinking principles into computer graphics education to enhance visualization literacy, based on a course inspired by Dear Data and evaluated through questionnaires and interviews.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel educational method combining visualization and design thinking, with empirical insights from a practical course implementation.

## Key findings

- Students improved their visualization skills and understanding of design principles.
- Identified key pain points and challenges faced by visualization novices.
- Provided design implications for enhancing visual literacy education.

## Abstract

The amount of visual communication we are facing is rapidly increasing, and skills to process, understand, and generate visual representations are in high demand. Especially students focusing on computer graphics and visualization can benefit from a more diverse education on visual literacy, as they often have to work on graphical representations for broad masses after their graduation. Our proposed teaching approach incorporates basic design thinking principles into traditional visualization and graphics education. Our course was inspired by the book Dear Data that was the subject of a lively discussion at the closing capstone of IEEE VIS 2017. The paper outlines our 12-week teaching experiment and summarizes the results extracted from accompanying questionnaires and interviews. In particular, we provide insights into the creation process and pain points of visualization novices, discuss the observed interplay between visualization tasks and design thinking, and finally draw design implications for visual literacy education in general.