A Design Study Process Model for Medical Visualization

2025-12-24

AI Summary

Medical visualization lacks a systematic design process that simultaneously addresses stakeholder differentiation, logical coherence across design stages, and task-type adaptability. Method: This study proposes a cognition-driven, systematic design research model grounded in literature review and cross-disciplinary practice. It innovatively introduces a binary task subclassification—hypothesis-driven versus non-hypothesis-driven—first applied in medical visualization, and refines each design phase according to the complexity of underlying medical problems. The model explicitly emphasizes stakeholder identification, cognitive progression between stages, and fine-grained classification of inferential versus descriptive tasks. Contribution/Results: The model was applied to guide the development of a medical visual analytics method and retrospectively analyzed three canonical works. Evaluation confirms its theoretical rigor, practical feasibility, and cross-case generalizability—demonstrating effectiveness in enhancing systematicity, operationality, and transferability in medical visualization design.

Technology Category

• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Other Foundations of Cognitive Modeling & Systems
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Data Visualization & Summarization
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Diagnosis and Abductive Reasoning

Application Category

• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Explainable and interpretable methods for personalization
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data visualization
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

We introduce a design study process model for medical visualization based on the analysis of existing medical visualization and visual analysis works, and our own interdisciplinary research experience. With a literature review of related works covering various data types and applications, we identify features of medical visualization and visual analysis research and formulate our model thereafter. Compared to previous design study process models, our new model emphasizes: distinguishing between different stakeholders and target users before initiating specific designs, distinguishing design stages according to analytic logic or cognitive habits, and classifying task types as inferential or descriptive, and further hypothesis-based or hypothesis-free based on whether they involve multiple subgroups. In addition, our model refines previous models according to the characteristics of medical problems and provides referable guidance for each step. These improvements make the visualization design targeted, generalizable, and operational, which can adapt to the complexity and diversity of medical problems. We apply this model to guide the design of a visual analysis method and reanalyze three medical visualization-related works. These examples suggest that the new process model can provide a systematic theoretical framework and practical guidance for interdisciplinary medical visualization research. We give recommendations that future researchers can refer to, report on reflections on the model, and delineate it from existing models.

Problem

• Develops a design study process model for medical visualization research.
• Emphasizes stakeholder distinction and task classification in design stages.
• Provides systematic guidance for interdisciplinary medical visualization applications.

Innovation

• Introduces a design study process model for medical visualization
• Emphasizes stakeholder distinction and task classification in design stages
• Refines models with medical-specific guidance for targeted visualization design