Creative user-centered visualization design for energy analysts and modelers

Goodwin, S., Dykes, J., Jones, S., Dillingham, I., Dove, G., Duffy, A., Kachkaev, A., Slingsby, A. & Wood, J.

We enhance a user-centered design process with techniques that deliberately promote creativity to derive requirements and identify opportunities for the visualization of data generated by a major energy supplier. A series of 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’. The work, undertaken in an applied context, strongly suggests: that the deliberate use of cre- ativity 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. It 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.

Citation and full paper:

Goodwin, S., Dykes, J., Jones, S., Dillingham, I., Dove, G., Duffy, A., Kachkaev, A., Slingsby, A. & Wood, J. (2013). Creative user-centered visualization design for energy analysts and modelers. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19(12), pp. 2516-2525.