IEEE VIS 2024 Content: Visualization Artifacts are Boundary Objects

Visualization Artifacts are Boundary Objects

Jasmine Tan Otto - UC Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, United States

Scott Davidoff - California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, United States

Download preprint PDF
Download camera-ready PDF

Room: Bayshore I

2024-10-14T16:00:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2024-10-14T16:00:00Z
Exemplar figure, described by caption below
A `transit network' map of knowledge transfer in complex organizations. Each station represents a stakeholder group. Each line represents a single vertical, pipeline, or other system along which visualization artifacts (and other data products) may flow, acting as vehicles for organizational knowledge. In this example, the Relay, Robotics, and Science Mission groups each include various domain experts and decision-makers; the HCI vertical includes both visualization practitioners (Design and Visualization) and their close-collaborator domain experts (Staffing and Allocation). In this analogy, the task of visualization theory is not just to provide artifacts which serve as `vehicles for knowledge', nor only to identify systems through which knowledge flows, but also to discover processes which explain who shares knowledge, where it needs to go, and why it is (not) getting there.
Abstract

Despite 30+ years of academic practice, visualization still lacks an explanation of how and why it functions in complex organizations performing knowledge work. This survey examines the intersection of organizational studies and visualization design, highlighting the concept of \textit{boundary objects}, which visualization practitioners are adopting in both CSCW (computer-supported collaborative work) and HCI. This paper also collects the prior literature on boundary objects in visualization design studies, a methodology which maps closely to action research in organizations, and addresses the same problems of `knowing in common'. Process artifacts generated by visualization design studies function as boundary objects in their own right, facilitating knowledge transfer across disciplines within an organization. Currently, visualization faces the challenge of explaining how sense-making functions across domains, through visualization artifacts, and how these support decision-making. As a deeply interdisciplinary field, visualization should adopt the theory of boundary objects in order to embrace its plurality of domains and systems, whilst empowering its practitioners with a unified process-based theory.