User Centered Design Patterns for Visualization

Displays are increasingly being provided for use by non-IT experts, based on requests from (non-expert) clients of design. Designers of screen content and layout should be able to apply existing Visual Design knowledge. Most engineers and designers, however, are no specialist in Human-Computer Interaction. We aim at making this knowledge readily available for engineers who are responsible for designing screens. We provide an overview of knowledge available, and show our attempts to make this usable for engineers. 1 Screen Design is not Just About Pixels Information Technology (IT) has been using displays for over 40 years. The variation in screen sizes is still growing. Screens are designed for clients of design (industries as well as buyers of products) who intend their products to be used by people. Screens are being used by people to see, understand, and experience things. Today’s screen users are no longer IT specialists. Consequently, screen design should be based on insight in how visual presentations interact with human perception, understanding, decisions, and actions. Engineers design (1) the screens, and most of the time engineers design (2) the way content data will be displayed. Both design efforts require attention to the prospective users of the screen. However, engineers who have to design the graphical user interface often lack sufficient education in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) or Visual Design (VD) to optimally serve the user, especially in small and medium sized enterprises. This paper is about knowledge of how information could / should be displayed. The paper shows our ongoing research in developing support for engineers. We aim at enabling them to make optimal use of design knowledge from HCI and VD. In fact this knowledge is available, (1) in the format of user interface design patterns (e.g., [We09], [Ti08]); (2) in publications from the design community (e.g., [LH03]); and (3) in (webbased) accounts of ongoing research (e.g., [OR09]).