Building Tools For Creative Data Exploration: A Comparative Overview Of Data-Driven Design And User-Centered Design

Visualization scientists seek means to inspire insights from data, which require creative thinking on the part of analysts as well as cognitive reasoning. In information visualization a focus on the user has proven highly effective in the design of usable and engaging interfaces, although it has been argued that such a focus limits innovation in insights about the data and in the creation of metaphors for visualization. If a user-centered design recapitulates existing knowledge, then a design approach which derives exclusively from the data may provide more innovative results. Our approach considers both the designers and the users, whereby our goal is to elicit creativity in both the design of visualization tools and in their application. We compare user-centered design and data-driven design through tool sets that emerged from each of these methods. User-centered design methodologies were used in the creation of a custom interface for editors at a major national newspaper that visualizes measures of each story's popularity. Data-driven design methodologies were used to create a tangible user interface for data visualization. With UCD we built a tool that supported the use of data in editorial decisions and deployed familiar metaphors to encourage significant change in workplace practice. With DDD we unleashed creativity on the part of analysts which resulted in a more innovative approach on the part of designers and a gateway to new user communities. We compare strengths and weaknesses of each methodology through a reflection of our design outcomes.