Visualising things. Perspectives on how to make things public through visualisation

Abstract

In this paper, we will be discussing how visualisations can facilitate participatory processes by way of conveying issues of public concern as ‘things’. In the line of Latour’s plea to ‘make things public’, visualisations can be purposefully designed to trigger and encourage public debates concerning a wide range of issues. For this, we explore how a visualisation can be both transparent (i.e. visualising the complex entanglement of backstories of an issue) and readable. Specifically, we clarify the aspect of designing a readable visualisation of ‘things’. First, drawing from different fields of literature (i.e. Information Visualisation, Science and Technology Studies and Human-Computer-Interaction) we will articulate three main aspects of readability: engaging people to interact with a visualisation of complex issues, supporting sense making and encouraging reflection. Then, based on three empirical case studies, we indicate different design considerations in terms of engaging people to interact with a visualisation: contextualising a visualisation (via its location or medium), staging interaction and allowing people to provide their own perspective on the issue displayed. As a conclusion we propose a scenario that allows the visualisation to gradually become more transparent in support of its readability.

Keywords:

• participation
• information visualisation
• infovis
• visual design
• public visualisation
• public debate
• thing

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. When cases involved an iterative design cycle, only the final visualisation was evaluated for its readability.

2. This case has been published in a paper about the design implications of putting visualisations in a local, social context. Some results are summarised in this paper; however, we primarily build upon new knowledge on how this visualisation made the issue transparent.

3. This exhibition was part of Manifesta 9, The European Biennial of Contemporary Art that ran from 2 June to 30 September 2012 in Genk (BE).

4. Seventh Design triennial of Flanders, held on the C-mine site in Genk, from 15 December 2013 to 9 March 2014.