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Article published In: Information Visualization
Edited by Isabel Meirelles, Marian Dörk and Yanni Loukissas
[Information Design Journal 27:1] 2022
► pp. 85–101

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“This figure could be better, but how?”

Advancing design critique in STEM research labs

 | University of Washington
 | University of Washington
 | Microsoft Corporation
ORCiD logo with link | University of Washington
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 7 November 2022
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/idj.22008.sem
Abstract
This paper considers whether scientists can improve their visual design abilities by participating in critiques. In design education, a critique is a class session where designers present their work-in-progress and receive feedback from faculty, peers, and invited critics. In this study, we show that an intervention consisting of (1) an introduction to visual principles, (2) an explanation of critique methodology, and (3) participation in a group critique led to a significant increase in both the quantity and quality of feedback that scientists provided on a set of figures. These findings indicate that critiques can be a valuable practice for scientists to integrate into their research labs.
Article outline
  • A potential solution: Design critiques
  • Method
    • The critique intervention
    • Assessing the critique intervention
  • Results
    • Increased feedback quantity in both problems and suggestions
  • Discussion
    • Nature of the Improvements
      • 1.Scientists progressed from merely identifying visual problems to actively proposing design solutions
      • 2.Scientists increased the specificity in both their suggestions and problem identifications, including more references to visual principles as supporting rationale
      • 3.Scientists became more focused on using visual attributes to direct attention to a “key message”
      • 4.Scientists increased the number of suggestions that employed visual attributes rather than text editing
      • 5.Scientists expect figures to communicate specific kinds of content
  • Conclusions
    • Implementing critique in STEM lab groups
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
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