An Image-based Typology for Visualization

TL;DR

This paper develops an image-based typology of visualizations through qualitative analysis, categorizing visualization images into 10 types to aid research, teaching, and standardization efforts.

Contribution

It introduces a novel image-based typology of visualizations derived from qualitative analysis, with a dataset and tool for further research and standardization.

Findings

Identified 10 main visualization types

Provided coding decisions and methodology details

Enabled categorization and analysis of visualization images

Abstract

We present and discuss the results of a qualitative analysis of visualization images to derive an image-based typology of visualizations. For each image, we seek to identify its main focus or the essential stimuli. As a result, we derived 10 image-based visualization types. We describe coding decisions we made in the derivation process. The resulting image typology can serve a number of purposes: enabling researchers and practitioners to identify visual design styles, facilitating the categorization of visualization images for the purpose of research and teaching, enabling researchers to study the evolution of the community and its research output over time, and facilitating a discussion of standardization in visualization. In addition, the tool and dataset enable scholars to closely examine the images and how they are published and communicated in our community. osf.io/dxjwt presents a pre-registration and all supplemental materials.