Directions for Methodological Research in Information Visualization

People within and outside the information visualization community are motivated to create new tools to address their own unique problems of understanding data. However, the techniques which visualizations use to enhance cognition of data are not widely known outside the field. Also, there are currently few resources which comprehensively describe methods for designing novel visualizations. Consequently, people who seek to build new information visualization tools are left to consult design examples, guidelines, and reference models, which do not adequately describe the visualization design process or suggest ways to undertake the process. We identify some of these shortcomings, provide an overview of methodological knowledge in information visualization design to date, and suggest that methods from other design-oriented disciplines can bridge these shortcomings.