"It's a Good Idea to Put It Into Words": Writing `Rudders' in the Initial Stages of Visualization Design

TL;DR

This paper explores how integrating written language, such as questions and conclusions, can guide visualization design, showing designers find value in explicit writing strategies despite some concerns about bias.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of 'writing rudders' as a new, lightweight strategy to enhance visualization design processes based on empirical studies.

Findings

Designers see benefits in writing questions and conclusions during design.

Participants are positive about using writing strategies in future work.

Writing narratives is mainly useful during the creation stage.

Abstract

Written language is a useful tool for non-visual creative activities like writing essays and planning searches. This paper investigates the integration of written language in to the visualization design process. We create the idea of a 'writing rudder,' which acts as a guiding force or strategy for the design. Via an interview study of 24 working visualization designers, we first established that only a minority of participants systematically use writing to aid in design. A second study with 15 visualization designers examined four different variants of written rudders: asking questions, stating conclusions, composing a narrative, and writing titles. Overall, participants had a positive reaction; designers recognized the benefits of explicitly writing down components of the design and indicated that they would use this approach in future design work. More specifically, two approaches - writing questions and writing conclusions/takeaways - were seen as beneficial across the design process, while writing narratives showed promise mainly for the creation stage. Although concerns around potential bias during data exploration were raised, participants also discussed strategies to mitigate such concerns. This paper contributes to a deeper understanding of the interplay between language and visualization, and proposes a straightforward, lightweight addition to the visualization design process.