Investigating the support of visualization creation activities with children

Abstract

Visualization is now seen ubiquitously in everyday life, and is used by a variety of people. As such, ensuring that visualization practices are democratised so that even novices can access visualization tools has become an active area of research. However, while the basic skills which are used to create visualizations are taught from Primary School, little research exists on how to support children in visualization practices. This thesis starts to explore this area by addressing how we can create visualization tools which support Primary School children in visualization creation activities.

To explore the creation of visualization tools for children I investigate the use of the Constructive Visualization paradigm. This paradigm, which has been productive with adult visualization novices, aims to provide simple, expressive, and dynamic tools. I investigate providing such tools to children through physical and digital modalities.

The use of physical objects in Primary School education, and their proven utility with adult novices, make them a productive method to explore children’s visualization processes. I therefore contribute the design of a physical token set to support children in visualization activities. Using this token set I conducted two studies, in out-of-school clubs and a local Primary School, exploring children’s use of the tools and their visualization processes.

Following from these studies I present a set of learning objectives and design principles which can inform the design of digital visualization tools for children. Guided by these principles I designed a digital visualization tool for Primary School children: Construct-A-Vis. I conducted a study using Construct-A-Vis in a local Primary School to explore how children respond to digital visualization tools which support the free-form exploration of a variety of visual mappings.

Children showed a critical engagement in their visualization creation tasks, suggesting that Constructive Visualization can support children in visualization activities.

Date of Award	30 Jun 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Uta Hinrichs (Supervisor)