out on subsequent tellings, the
source of the derivation remains
clear. This process also supports
the democratic notion of back-ing up a claim with evidence. In
exactly the same way, the visualization interface must emphasize the original visualization
and its intention, yet support
derivations. This process is
called annotation.
A means of capturing these
story annotations will retain the
benefit of the community-driven
storytelling process around the
visualization. Just as the original visualization is a capture of
the underlying data set, subsequent versions of the visualization also must be captured and
attached to preserve the original message but at the same
time allow the breadth that
comes of continued discussion.
So another part of the model
is building processes into the
interface that allow annotations
to be preserved, commented on,
and subsequently reviewed by
other members of the community. It is this process within the
framework that provides shared
storytelling through visualization with the ability to create
knowledge artifacts around
data. The process is called
snapshot, and with this, extra data
created around the visualization
is preserved.
Significant amounts of data
can be generated because the
entire process of shared sto-
rytelling through visualiza-
tion is a life cycle that repeats
infinitely. The framework gives
data visualization a life force
by providing it with an identity
that enables it to exist within an
object-centered social network
and making it an interface so
that people can interact with it
to begin a shared storytelling
experience. As data becomes
increasingly prevalent on the
World Wide Web, the ability to
engage with a communal visu-
alization of a data set is a more
useful experience than new
methods of visualizing data. For
designers, this is a change in
approach toward visualization;
no longer is it about making the
most visually appealing and
sophisticated representations.
Instead, this creativity should
be constrained to reverting the
control of data to people and
providing a good experience
along the way. With these tech-
nologies, it’s impossible to imag-
ine how many important stories
will be told by groups of like-
minded people in the future.
with government. If you’re interested
in finding out about the framework
in more detail we’ve published it as a
series of interaction design patterns
at http://socialvizpatterns.info.
Acknowledgements
This research was conducted within
the Australasian CRC for Interaction
Design, which is established and
supported under the Australian
Government’s Cooperative Research
Centres Program.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Jeremy Yuille is an interaction designer, digital media
artist, and academic with a
background in digital art,
music, performance, and
architecture. He has a bachelor’s of design
studies from the architecture department of
the University of Queensland and a master’s of design from SIAL at RMIT University.
Yuille is a cofounder of the Media and
Communication Design Studio at RMIT,
where he undertakes collaborative research
with the Australasian CRC for Interaction
Design (ACID), supervises postgraduate
students, and holds interaction design studios. He is also a certified ScrumMaster
and a director of the Interaction Design
Association. He infrequently blogs on
design and the progress of his Ph.D. at
http://isomorpho.us.
Postscript
In this article we’ve discussed how
the framework for an interface
encourages social interactions around
data visualization, which we’ve
proposed, can be used with open
data, to encourage transparency and
enhance community engagement
Hugh Macdonald is a
research assistant on the
ACID Loupe Project and
has been researching infor-
mation visualization and
theories of social interac-
tion design. He is also currently a Ph.D.
student at the School of Media and
Communication at RMIT University in
Melbourne, Australia. His research involves
how the emergence of networked media,
along with its technologies and social prac-
tices, is changing the way professional
sporting organizations and sports fans
interact with each other within the media
landscape. Macdonald also maintains a
keen interest in mobile technologies, hav-
ing previously worked in this area and
received a related master’s degree. He is
currently looking at some of the social
effects of these technologies.
January + February 2010
DOI: 10.1145/1649475.1649482
© 2010 ACM 1072-5220/10/0100 $10.00