User-Driven Support for Visualization Prototyping in D3

Enrollments in online courses continue to grow. With this growth has come an increased need for instructors to develop content for their courses using digital technology. To address instructors’ abilities to develop content for a virtual environment, institutions have focused on the most effective and efficient ways to design online courses and programs. However, despite increased focus on the instructional design of online courses, little attention has been given to their visual design. This is problematic because research suggests that the visual design of online courses can improve the student learning experience. Given this problem, additional research is needed to understand the visual design of online courses, including page layout design and the integration of visual media. Three different studies were conducted to address this problem (a.) Study 1 is a literature review that synthesizes the relevant topics in visual communication design to online course development. The study addressed the mechanics of visual design but also external factors that influence visual design thinking. In this chapter, the authors seek to clarify the process of using visual design to improve the online learning experience. The chapter concludes by suggesting strategies that colleges and universities can use to help faculty and instructional designers learn visual design skills through the creation of a design studio. (b.) Study 2 is an exploratory qualitative study that investigates the ways in which educators in higher education apply visual design to their online courses through the design process framework of looking, thinking, doing, and critiquing (LTD+C). Semi-structured interviews were conducted to explore instructor’s use of a visual design process, application of visual design thinking, and perceived barriers in designing online classrooms. Based on the findings of the study, it is suggested that the visual design process in online courses can fit within the LTD+C framework and activities associated with each part of the process should be further explored. (c.) Study 3 is a qualitative content analysis of images used in online courses. The study examined the current use of images in higher-education online classrooms along with the ability of instructors to create, select, and apply images to an online classroom learning management system by exploring well-known frameworks of image taxonomy in online classrooms. Based on the findings of this study it is suggested that the current framework of educational image taxonomy can be elaborated upon and that instructors need better training in appropriately handling using images in online classrooms. The general conclusion promoted in this dissertation is that visual design needs more emphasis within the field of education from both practical applications and research-based studies.

With the continuous development of China’s social economy, the competitiveness of brand market is gradually increasing. In order to improve their own level in brand building, major enterprises gradually explore and study visual communication design. Brand visual design has also received more and more attention. Building a complete and rich visual design system can improve the brand level and attract users to consume. Based on the abovementioned situation, this paper proposes to use collaborative filtering algorithm to analyze and study brand visual design. Firstly, a solution is proposed to solve the problem of low accuracy of general recommendation algorithm in brand goods. Collaborative filtering algorithm is used to analyze the visual communication design process of enterprise brand. Research on personalized image design according to consumers’ trust and recognition of brand design is conducted. In traditional craft brand visual design, we mainly study the impact of image design on consumer behavior. The brand loyalty model is used to predict and analyze the visual design effect. Also, the user’s evaluation coefficient is taken as the expression of brand visual design recognition. Finally, the collaborative filtering algorithm is optimized to improve the consumer similarity based on the original algorithm. The results show that the brand visual design using collaborative filtering algorithm can help enterprises obtain greater benefits in their own brand construction. It provides effective data help in the development of traditional craft brands.

New technologies have made the world highly visual, making visual literacy an important and relevant 21st-century skill. Educators and students are often required to produce visual communication products such as infographics, but they often lack the confidence and proficiency in visual design skills to create higher-quality infographics. We conducted a case study to examine how graphic and instructional designers perform the visual design process (i.e., a series of actions performed in composing an infographic, such as creating layout and alignment) when applying visual design principles. The goal was to investigate the visual design processes and identify differences in the strategies used to develop higher versus lower quality infographics rated across 18 design criteria. We identified the design actions and computed the transitional probability between the design actions to construct a process model for composing effective infographics. Results reveal that high-rated infographics were developed using a more systematic approach, starting by creating a well-planned structure (e.g., setting margins and columns) followed by setting spatial zones to map out a visual hierarchy prior to working on fonts, colors, and graphic elements, and using a consistent application of visual rules. These target processes were encapsulated into a five-stage Infographic Visual Design Model.

Written language is a useful tool for non-visual creative activities like composing essays and planning searches. This paper investigates the integration of written language into the visualization design process. We create the idea of a 'writing rudder,' which acts as a guiding force or strategy for the designer. 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.

We propose a new approach to the visualization design and communication process, literate visualization, based upon and extending, Donald Knuth's idea of literate programming. It integrates the process of writing data visualization code with description of the design choices that led to the implementation (design exposition). We develop a model of design exposition characterised by four visualization designer architypes: the evaluator, the autonomist, the didacticist and the rationalist. The model is used to justify the key characteristics of literate visualization: 'notebook' documents that integrate live coding input, rendered output and textual narrative; low cost of authoring textual narrative; guidelines to encourage structured visualization design and its documentation. We propose narrative schemas for structuring and validating a wide range of visualization design approaches and models, and branching narratives for capturing alternative designs and design views. We describe a new open source literate visualization environment, litvis, based on a declarative interface to Vega and Vega-Lite through the functional programming language Elm combined with markdown for formatted narrative. We informally assess the approach, its implementation and potential by considering three examples spanning a range of design abstractions: new visualization idioms; validation though visualization algebra; and feminist data visualization. We argue that the rich documentation of the design process provided by literate visualization offers the potential to improve the validity of visualization design and so benefit both academic visualization and visualization practice.

We present and report on Design Exposition Discussion Documents (DExDs), a new means of fostering collaboration between visualization designers and domain experts in applied visualization research. DExDs are a collection of semi-interactive web-based documents used to promote design discourse: to communicate new visualization designs, and their underlying rationale, and to elicit feedback and new design ideas. Developed and applied during a four-year visual data analysis project in criminal intelligence, these documents enabled a series of visualization re-designs to be explored by crime analysts remotely - in a flexible and authentic way. The DExDs were found to engender a level of engagement that is qualitatively distinct from more traditional methods of feedback elicitation, supporting the kind of informed, iterative and design-led feedback that is core to applied visualization research. They also offered a solution to limited and intermittent contact between analyst and visualization researcher and began to address more intractable deficiencies, such as social desirability-bias, common to applied visualization projects. Crucially, DExDs conferred to domain experts greater agency over the design process - collaborators proposed design suggestions, justified with design knowledge, that directly influenced the re-redesigns. We provide context that allows the contributions to be transferred to a range of settings.

This article presents the urban data visualization (UDV) card deck, a tool designed to facilitate reflective discussions and inform the collaborative design process of urban data visualization. The UDV card deck was developed to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practice in workshop settings, fostering inclusive and reflective approaches to visualization design. Drawing from urban visualization design literature and the results from a series of expert workshops, these cards summarize key considerations when designing urban data visualizations. The card deck guides different activities in an engaging, collaborative, and structured format, promoting inclusion of diverse urban actors. We introduce the card deck and its goals, demonstrate its use in four case studies, and discuss our findings. Feedback from workshop participants indicates that the urban data visualization card deck can serve as a supportive and reflective tool for urban data visualization researchers, designers, and practitioners.

Design method is an important part of design, and it is an important product of academic and educational research practice. This paper discusses different fields of visual design and their methodological issues, based on the definition of visual communication design, WOS and a search of relevant literature on the Internet, with the aim of understanding the essential properties of visual communication activities from a methodological stratification perspective and clarifying the norms of different disciplines involved in visual communication. The objectives, content, processing, and output of two types of visual design activities with purpose and means are analyzed in terms of design process, conceptual framework of visual representation, and qualitative and quantitative aspects. As an interdisciplinary design discipline, visual design is essentially a comprehensive activity of information dissemination that occurs in a variety of scenarios, including business, education, and science. It is necessary to keep the boundary, clarify the ideographic and stylistic characteristics of visual design, and improve the ontological quality of visual design profession, but it is also necessary to cross the boundary on the basis of keeping the boundary, so as to better cultivate visual ability, promote the transformation of visual design methods in other fields, and improve the disciplinary growth of the profession in the new era.

The rapid change of technology has driven the information industry to advance and develop, and the computer network technology has been greatly improved, which also promotes the artistic expression of visual communication to develop in the direction of diversification and enrichment, providing designers with more sufficient performance carriers in visual communication design. As an essential communication method and medium in modern art and design, multimedia technology assumes the role of information transmission and communication in the teaching process of visual communication design and is an important communication platform. At the same time, in order to meet the market demand for talents, visual communication professional teaching is also faced with the contemporary task of cultivating innovative talents. And multimedia technology is gradually being applied in the field of education and teaching, becoming one of the driving forces to promote the evolution of teaching methods and teaching modes. Multimedia technology, as a medium of visual symbolic communication with the times, can not only expand and extend the depth and breadth of visual communication professional teaching but also promote the improvement of teaching methods and modes. This paper proposes that, against the background of continuous technological innovation, it is very necessary to further integrate multimedia technology into the teaching of visual communication majors. This paper discusses and analyzes and studies the application of multimedia technology in the teaching of visual communication from the aspect of innovative development in the teaching of visual communication.

In film the role of Production Designer is very important because it is responsible for mise-en-scene writing, which includes the design and visuals of the entire film production. Production Designers have the task of designing and creating design drawings for various elements in the film, such as locations, graphics, props, lighting, scenes, makeup, and costumes. This research will investigate the role and contribution of Production Designers in the film industry, especially in the context of visual production design, revealing a number of challenges and critical aspects that may be faced by Production Designers. What are the new technologies used by Production Designers in the visual production design process? How do production designers balance their creative vision with the constraints and realities of production? What awards have Production Designers received for their contributions to the film industry? The research method used to investigate the role and contribution of Production Designers in the film industry, especially in the context of visual production design is qualitative research methods. The role of a Production Designer in filmmaking is very important, because a Production Designer will be responsible for building the mood and look in the artistic order that will be built on the film according to the concept of the film's story including the use of color. In this research, it has been revealed that Production Designers use various technologies and innovations to produce impressive production designs. By continuing to use innovative technology and creativity, Production Designers will continue to be a major force in creating impressive visuals and changing the way we experience and appreciate film.

We conducted a one-day design workshop in which residents of a community collaborated in learning about and designing community-related visual simulations (to be implemented in Stagecast Creator). An analysis of their design ideas and concerns revealed several visual design patterns that were apparent even in these very early stages of simulation design. This analysis helps us to characterize the design constructs people may be able to specify or learn when first encountering visual simulation design tasks and projects. In this paper, we introduce the concept of patterns and their relationship to visual programming and present several visual programming language patterns mined from the projects developed at the community simulation design workshop. Finally, we discuss how these patterns might be incorporated into minimalist tutorials that we are developing to introduce community residents to visual simulation design.

With the continuous development of society, people's consumption concepts are also changing. For consumers, when purchasing goods, they must not only satisfy the use value of the goods themselves, but also have higher emotional expectations for the goods. Through the narrative design analysis of the Guanxia brand, this article deeply explores the emotional value and humanistic value conveyed by the Guanxia brand in the visual design, and provides a new design idea for the national fashion brand visual design, to enhance the product brand image. and added value, enhance consumers' emotional consumption of products, and combine narrative design with brand concepts, consumer psychology and other aspects. In this way, we explore the relationship between emotional consumption and narrative visual design, and re-examine consumer-centered design research.

We enhance a user-centered design process with techniques that deliberately promote creativity to identify opportunities for the visualization of data generated by a major energy supplier. Visualization prototypes developed in this way prove effective in a situation whereby data sets are largely unknown and requirements open - enabling successful exploration of possibilities for visualization in Smart Home data analysis. The process gives rise to novel designs and design metaphors including data sculpting. It suggests: that the deliberate use of creativity techniques with data stakeholders is likely to contribute to successful, novel and effective solutions; that being explicit about creativity may contribute to designers developing creative solutions; that using creativity techniques early in the design process may result in a creative approach persisting throughout the process. The work constitutes the first systematic visualization design for a data rich source that will be increasingly important to energy suppliers and consumers as Smart Meter technology is widely deployed. It is novel in explicitly employing creativity techniques at the requirements stage of visualization design and development, paving the way for further use and study of creativity methods in visualization design.

In the current trend of educational digitization, online learning platforms have proliferated, making the visual design of digital learning resources increasingly critical. However, existing visual designs for online learning resources face numerous challenges. The emergence of AIGC (Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content) technology offers innovative solutions to these issues. This paper explores the application of AIGC technology in enhancing the “new quality productive forces” of visual design for online learning resources. It emphasizes the need to balance technological innovation with humanistic care and highlights the importance of human intervention in the design process.

Public space scenes are being transformed by virtual reality (VR) technology, offering immersive and interactive experiences that redefine how people engage with their surroundings. Through VR simulations, users can explore and interact with virtual public spaces in ways that were previously impossible. From virtual parks and plazas to digital replicas of iconic landmarks, VR technology allows users to experience the ambiance and atmosphere of public spaces from the comfort of their own homes. Moreover, VR enables designers and planners to experiment with different layouts, amenities, and features, facilitating participatory design processes and community engagement. This paper presents a visual design and evaluation framework for public space scenes using virtual reality (VR) technology, enhanced by Virtual Parallel Edge Hashing Computing (VPE-HC). The framework aims to optimize the design and user experience of public spaces by leveraging VR technology to create immersive and interactive simulations. Through simulated experiments and empirical validations, the effectiveness of the VPE-HC-enhanced VR-based design and evaluation process is evaluated. Results demonstrate significant improvements in user satisfaction, engagement, and usability compared to traditional design methods. For instance, users interacting with public space scenes designed using VPE-HC reported a 40% increase in perceived safety and a 25% improvement in overall satisfaction ratings. Additionally, the framework enabled designers to optimize spatial layouts and amenities based on real-time user feedback and performance data, leading to more effective and user-centric design solutions. These findings underscore the potential of VPE-HC in enhancing the visual design and evaluation of public space scenes based on VR technology, facilitating more inclusive and user-friendly urban environments.