IEEE VIS 2025 Content: Watering the Future: Assessing a Visualization Design for Accessible Comprehension of Water Management

Watering the Future: Assessing a Visualization Design for Accessible Comprehension of Water Management

Sarah Yuniar -

Yuya Kawakami -

Logan Tang -

Kwan-Liu Ma -

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We believe data scientists and journalists who regularly design public-facing visualizations would be interested in our paper. Since complex data unfamiliar to the general public may be incorporated into visualizations designed by these practitioners, it would be paramount to collate strategies in visualizing such data in a way both informative and engaging to the audience. Our paper navigates the design process for such a visualization and discusses pitfalls as well as strategies in formulating a public-facing visualization for an unfamiliar field which we believe data scientists and journalists can integrate into their design workflow.
Keywords

Visualization design study, public-facing visualization, visual metaphor

Abstract

Managing water resources within California’s Central Valley is a complex task involving analyzing a myriad of factors e.g. climate, demand, and government policies. This results in opaque management decisions which are concentrated to a small group of people while the majority of the valley is left out of the decision-making process, leading to inequitable distribution. This paper assesses the design for Watering the Future, an application aiming to educate non-experts in water management about water distribution systems by illustrating regional water supplies and the factors behind them in a more understandable manner. We sought feedback from a domain expert in water management and conducted a user study to assess the effectiveness of our graph designs, of which results suggested increased levels of engagement while still communicating the required information, suggesting an enhanced level of accessibility to the unfamiliar field of water management.