Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
public health
data visualization
visualization practices
accessibility
design evaluation
Charting Public Health: A Taxonomic Study of Visualization Practices in the Public Health Field
🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses the lack of systematic research on data visualization design practices in real-world public health contexts, which hinders the evaluation of their effectiveness and suitability for public communication. For the first time, it collects and analyzes over 4,000 visualizations from the websites of more than 20 domestic and international public health agencies. Combining manual annotation with qualitative content analysis, the work systematically codes key features—including chart types, accessibility, decorative elements, and design flaws—and establishes the first reusable annotated dataset and classification framework for public health visualizations. The findings reveal prevalent design patterns and common shortcomings, offering empirical evidence to improve the communication of official health data. The study also publicly releases a visualization corpus to support future research in this domain.
📝 Abstract
Public health organizations regularly produce and publish data visualizations to raise awareness of critical issues, influence decision-making processes, and promote overall well-being. However, the design practices shaping these visualizations in real-world settings remain largely unexamined, limiting the research community's ability to evaluate their effectiveness, accessibility, and alignment with communication goals. To address this gap, we construct and analyze a large-scale corpus of over 4,000 real-world data visualizations drawn from more than two dozen websites associated with U.S. and international public health organizations. We evaluate salient design characteristics like chart type, visualization accessibility, use of embellishments like iconography, and design flaws. This work contributes to understanding real-world decisions in designing data visualizations and supports public health officials in improving data visualization-related communications. Visualizations in our finalized corpus and the labeled dataset can be found at https://github.com/washuvis/ChartingPublicHealth.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
public health visualization
visualization corpus
design practices
accessibility
empirical analysis
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2024-03-07arXiv.orgCitations: 1
