Currently, I’m writing a paper on the above topic. It is a paper long overdue from some past research work that I was involved in. In the paper, I discuss how graphic visualisation techniques and reflective practice can substantially inform research outcomes of a given project. In a way this paper digs in a bit deeper than my exegesis did concerning visualisation a content analysis. That’s fine though. I think my masters research went far enough that road, and stuck to its research question succinctly. Back to the paper though. I’ve been finding a whole lot of information though on visualisation but usually it is more directed towards clinical data, business data or any other data that presumably can be quantified into graphs, pie charts maps. What is missing though is some understanding of how qualitative information can be visualised and thus create relationships or enable researchers to ’see’ deeper into their own research. I know, I know. You guys will say, check out psychology or even a practice-based research project. Well I will keep looking but I think some sort of debriefing, intense and deep book on the subject in the design field is well over due. And yes, I am aware of Beasley & Noble’s book.
Okay, jumping a bit. This paper raised some questions for me as a design practitioner to explore. Some of you might be aware that I have found a concurrent passion to all this. It’s service design. I’m not going to get into the whole thing right now and how I ’saw the light’ but for now let us say that it is a field that I would like to explore and work on. With the economic crisis underway, businesses need to find ways to streamline their processes. Whether it be organizational, social or production, business are having a tough time keeping up without sacrificing usability and customer service. This paper got me to realise that possibly graphic literacy needs to be used within the workplace or better yet hired to educate decision makers and stakeholders of a company their options and strategies within these dark days. I’ll get the reference and insert it later but today I read that visualisation can help reduce cognitive load of understanding information and can in fact help create possibilities in the decision making process. If I can make this more explicit, it may be the starting point for something great.
Stay tuned!
April 6, 2009...8:59 am
Using visualisation to help understand research outcomes
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