"Mapping What I Feel": Understanding Affective Geovisualization Design Through the Lens of People-Place Relationships

TL;DR

This paper analyzes affective geovisualization design using geographic theory to develop a taxonomy and identify key design paradigms, advancing understanding of emotion-driven geographic visualizations.

Contribution

It introduces a domain-specific framework for affective geovisualization, including a taxonomy and identification of four core design paradigms, filling a research gap.

Findings

Developed a design taxonomy for affective geovisualization

Identified four high-level design paradigms guiding emotion-eliciting methods

Extended existing affective visualization frameworks with geographic insights

Abstract

Affective visualization design is an emerging research direction focused on communicating and influencing emotion through visualization. However, as revealed by previous research, this area is highly interdisciplinary and involves theories and practices from diverse fields and disciplines, thus awaiting analysis from more fine-grained angles. To address this need, this work focuses on a pioneering and relatively mature sub-area, affective geovisualization design, to further the research in this direction and provide more domain-specific insights. Through an analysis of a curated corpus of affective geovisualization designs using the Person-Process-Place (PPP) model from geographic theory, we derived a design taxonomy that characterizes a variety of methods for eliciting and enhancing emotions through geographic visualization. We also identified four underlying high-level design paradigms of affective geovisualization design (e.g., computational, anthropomorphic) that guide distinct approaches to linking geographic information with human experience. By extending existing affective visualization design frameworks with geographic specificity, we provide additional design examples, domain-specific analyses, and insights to guide future research and practices in this underexplored yet highly innovative domain.