We propose a new approach to the visualization design and communication process, literate visualization, based upon and extending, Donald Knuth's idea of literate programming. It integrates the process of writing data visualization code with description of the design choices that led to the implementation (design exposition). We develop a model of design exposition characterised by four visualization designer architypes: the evaluator, the autonomist, the didacticist and the rationalist. The model is used to justify the key characteristics of literate visualization: 'notebook' documents that integrate live coding input, rendered output and textual narrative; low cost of authoring textual narrative; guidelines to encourage structured visualization design and its documentation. We propose narrative schemas for structuring and validating a wide range of visualization design approaches and models, and branching narratives for capturing alternative designs and design views. We describe a new open source literate visualization environment, litvis, based on a declarative interface to Vega and Vega-Lite through the functional programming language Elm combined with markdown for formatted narrative. We informally assess the approach, its implementation and potential by considering three examples spanning a range of design abstractions: new visualization idioms; validation though visualization algebra; and feminist data visualization. We argue that the rich documentation of the design process provided by literate visualization offers the potential to improve the validity of visualization design and so benefit both academic visualization and visualization practice.

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Abstract-We enhance a user-centered design process with techniques that deliberately promote creativity to identify opportunities for the visualization of data generated by a major energy supplier. Visualization prototypes developed in this way prove effective in a situation whereby data sets are largely unknown and requirements open -enabling successful exploration of possibilities for visualization in Smart Home data analysis. The process gives rise to novel designs and design metaphors including data sculpting. It suggests: that the deliberate use of creativity techniques with data stakeholders is likely to contribute to successful, novel and effective solutions; that being explicit about creativity may contribute to designers developing creative solutions; that using creativity techniques early in the design process may result in a creative approach persisting throughout the process. The work constitutes the first systematic visualization design for a data rich source that will be increasingly important to energy suppliers and consumers as Smart Meter technology is widely deployed. It is novel in explicitly employing creativity techniques at the requirements stage of visualization design and development, paving the way for further use and study of creativity methods in visualization design. Permanent repository link

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link AbstractThe findings drawn from opinion survey responses are usually made by producing summary charts or conducting statistical analysis. Both involve data aggregation and filtering as exploring the unaggregated data has traditionally been impractical or error-prone for large numbers of responses. We propose the use of glyphs with parallel coordinate plots to show all survey responses in a single view and design an interactive visual analytics tool around the representation to explore the data. We use this software for a 'photo content assessment' survey, where 359 participants classify 900 images by seven criteria. The proposed approach allows all 8,434 responses (49,285 answers to questions in total) to be represented in a single view and helps analysts to both clean the data and understand the nature of the survey responses. We describe the construction of the survey response glyphs and the interface to the interactive visual analytics software and generalise the design principles that arise from the approach. We apply the tool to two other datasets to evaluate the technique and to confirm its wider applicability for surveys with Likert scale responses.

Digital music libraries and collections are growing quickly and are increasingly made available for research. We argue that the use of large data collections will enable a better understanding of music performance and music in general, which will benefit areas such as music search and recommendation, music archiving and indexing, music production and education. However, to achieve these goals it is necessary to develop new musicological research methods, to create and adapt the necessary technological infrastructure, and to find ways of working with legal limitations. Most of the necessary basic technologies exist, but they need to be brought together and applied to musicology. We aim to address these challenges in the Digital Music Lab project, and we feel that with suitable methods and technology Big Music Data can provide new opportunities to musicology