Usability of data visualization activity worksheets in the context of a critical data visualization workshop: Findings from a usability survey

Abstract

This evidence-based practice paper presents outcomes on workshop participants' perception of the usability of data visualization worksheets utilized in a critical data visualization workshop. Training students to think critically about data is a process that takes practice. Thinking critically about data requires understanding the data, its provenance and context, and the best way to represent insights contained in the data. A 5-day workshop on teaching critical and ethical approaches to data visualization was hosted by the Center for Science of Information at Purdue University in June 2019. The motivation for the workshop was to provide an introduction to data science through the lens of critical data visualization. In addition to instruction and hands-on data visualization and data manipulation exercises supported by activity worksheets, workshop participants were exposed to small group discussion and active-learning focused team science and data visualization ethics modules. This three-prong approach provides the context in which the data visualization activity worksheets were utilized. This paper focuses solely upon the results of a usability survey of data visualization activity worksheets to introduce the data visualization process and reports students' perception of the worksheets to introduce the data visualization process to novice users. Overall participant perception of the worksheet method was positive: 61% thought the method was easy to use, felt most people would learn to use the method quickly, felt confident using the worksheet method after using the worksheets for multiple visualization challenges and indicated they would like to use the method frequently when applying the data visualization process. This work is funded by The National Science Foundation (Award #CCF-0939370). Next steps involve integrating team science and data visualization ethics activities into future iterations of the data visualization activity sheets and usability survey.