# Identifying Framing Practices in Visualization Design Through Practitioner Reflections

## TL;DR

This paper explores how visualization designers use framing throughout their creative process, highlighting its importance in problem definition, data interpretation, and storytelling, based on reflections from practitioners.

## Contribution

It reveals framing as a central, iterative activity in visualization design, emphasizing its role in guiding decisions and shaping narratives, which has been underexplored in prior research.

## Key findings

- Framing occurs throughout the visualization design process.
- Practitioners use specific strategies to navigate uncertainty.
- Reframing is triggered by contextual and stakeholder factors.

## Abstract

Framing -- how designers define and reinterpret problems, shape narratives, and guide audience understanding -- is central to design practice. Yet in visualization research, framing has been examined mostly through its rhetorical and perceptual effects on audiences, leaving its role in the design process underexplored. This study addresses that gap by analyzing publicly available podcasts and book chapters in which over 80 professional visualization designers reflect on their work. We find that framing is a pervasive, iterative activity, evident in scoping problems, interpreting data, aligning with stakeholder goals, and shaping narrative direction. Our analysis identifies the conditions that trigger reframing and the strategies practitioners use to navigate uncertainty and guide design. These findings position framing as a core dimension of visualization practice and underscore the need for research and education to support the interpretive and strategic judgment that practitioners exercise throughout the design process.