The Individual in the Data — the Aspect of Personal Relevance in Designing Casual Data Visualisations

Abstract

Over the last two decades, data visualisation has diffused into the broader realm of mass communication. Before this shift, tools and displays of data-driven geographic- and information visualisation were mostly used in expert contexts. By now, they are also used in casual contexts, for example on newspaper websites, government data portals and many other public outlets. This diversification of the audience poses new challenges within the visualisation community. In this paper we propose personal relevance as one factor to be taken into account when designing casual data visualisations, which are meant for the communication with non-experts. We develop a conceptual model and present a related set of design techniques for interactive web-based visualisations that are aimed at activating personal relevance. We discuss our proposed techniques by applying them to a use case on the visualisation of air pollution in London (UK).