Beyond guidelines: what can we learn from the visual information seeking mantra?

The field of information visualization offers little methodological guidance to practitioners who seek to design novel systems. Though many sources describe the foundations of the domain, few discuss practical methods for solving visualization problems. One frequently cited guideline to design is the "Visual information-seeking mantra", proposed by Shneiderman in 1996. Although often used to inform the design of information visualization systems, it is unclear what use this has been for visualization designers. We reviewed the current literature that references the mantra, noting what authors have found useful about it and why they cite it. The results indicate a need for empirical validation of the mantra and for a method, such as design patterns, to inform a holistic approach to visualisation design.