Impostering, Scientifically

A New Way for Designers to Be

Literature

In my review, I discuss findings from four separate but overlapping fields: human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology, design studies, and visualization studies. All of these fields have much, of much value, to say. But they fail to address how a designer should do the work of using visualization skills to spark new scientific insight. HCI demonstrates the fact that visualization can have an impact on researchers, and carefully catalogs what this impact is. Cognitive psychology characterizes how visualization is able to enter a person’s mind and create complex meaning within. Visualization studies catalogs novel and historical methods and techniques for representing information in visual form. Design studies, among many other things, elucidates the ways that scientific knowledge is constructed.

Examining the Doing

Unfortunately, none of these extremely valuable things tells me how I should proceed as a recursive visualization designer if I aim to spark novel insights. The inner mechanics of the design choices and actions themselves are not to be found in this literature. In order to discover the techniques and methods, I have chosen the practical approach of simply getting to work and doing it. This thesis is built around three supporting case studies, and one primary case study, all of which are different explorations into the territory of designing within the context of active scientific research. In each I will explain what I did, how I did it, what choices I made, why I made those choices, and what affect my work had. I believe that design is not purely an intellectual pursuit, it can never be fully understood through reading, thinking, and writing alone. I have certainly done all three of those things in this process and I believe in their value, but the core of research work involved designing as an action.

Living in the Prototype

It is fair to ask: ‘Why should a designer be on a research team?’ I will answer this question by showing in my case studies that bringing the discipline of design into the context of science derived novel and unexpected results. There are days when I have felt like an imposter, working alongside scientists who have knowledge and a breadth of understanding of the universe that I will never have. For this reason I have worked throughout this year to hone and examine every part of my process as a designer, so that I can bring something of real value to the table. We could consider each of the case studies that I will present as prototypes. But I consider myself and my practice to be the prototype. Each case study is a context of exploration. This document is a synthesis of what I have found along the way during this transformation of self.