Visual Concept Models
Higher Resolution Design Process and Thinking
The Importance
Current popular models of the design process, although useful, do not accurately capture the sophistication and complexity of design, particularly for expert users. Recursive visualization requires a careful sensitivity to the context and needs of the moment, it is therefore useful to articulate carefully how process should unfold.
A Starting Place
Professor Wayne Chung describes a two-by-two matrix, with the x axis being tangible to intangible outputs, and the y axis being tangible to intangible activities. This model, for a designer willing to adopt its more flexible stance, allows for greater adaptability because the time dimension is not prescribed. A designer may find this challenging because they will have to use their intuitive and logical mind to select the most appropriate action for each moment in a design process. However, if this is accomplished successfully, the designer will have employed a bespoke approach which is a harmonious response to the realities of the context. This careful engagement and multifaceted approach is critical for recursive visualization design particularly because the designer must be responding actively to a research partner.
The Axis of Agency
Earlier discussion of visualization, translation, distillation, and interpretation described different meta-skills which a designer brings to bear on design territories. These meta-skills should be read as describing the relationship between the designer and the expert researcher, not simply as descriptions of what a designer does. The figure shows these skills mapped to a continuum from most to least agency for the designer, as well as my own journey from one end to the other over time as an example. When I first began my medical illustration work, my job was purely to visualize, which left little room for me to make higher level decisions. A doctor would describe what they wanted to see, and it was my job to make form choices which would materialize this data into an image. This is a highly unidirectional flow which leaves little room for the designer to feed back into the research process. Over time, the doctors that I worked with came to realize that the process of explaining their needs to me actually helped them understand their own work and expertise better. As they gained trust in me, they began to allow me to ask more questions and make more suggestions about how a concept might be represented: perhaps a an animation instead of sequential anatomic plates for a physiologic concept. As their trust continued to grow, I was allowed to distill by helping the doctors to select the most critical pieces of their knowledge to express, stepping further into their world and making more choices. On the furthest end is interpretation, in which their is a dialog between the designer and the researcher from the beginning of project conception, with the designer given free reign to interpret, transform, and reveal new perspectives on the researcher’s knowledge and data.
Recursive Visualization Loop
The four meta-skills also map to the recursive visualization loop shown opposite. Imagine a process in which the designer is asked simply to visualize: this process is linear, direct, and terminates in a known outcome like a set of railroad tracks. As the designer is given more trust, the outcome can be elevated, slight variation from the expected outcome may appear and be more desirable and expressive than the simple linear destination. Given additional access and trust, the designer is able to distill the researchers knowledge into forms which are significantly different or unexpected, continuing to elevate the power of the work. Finally, when the collaboration works at its best, the designer is allowed to feed back into the research process itself, redefining a new direction for the investigation. It is in these moments of feeding novel visualizations back to the researcher that the potential for new insight is revealed.
Areas of Opportunity
Scientific research, as described by the study participants contains three phases: explore, experiment, and conclude. Although design has something to offer in all of these moments, the real power of recursive visualization design is in the exploratory phase. In experimental and conclusion phases, the designer is often restricted to communicating the already formulated ideas of the scientist, or making technical graphics to capture an already made discovery. The utility of these tasks should not be underestimated, but designers have more freedom to catalyze novel research directions during the exploratory phase.
