A Taxonomy-Driven Model for Designing Educational Games in Visualization

Abstract

Visualization literacy of the broader audiences is becoming an important topic, as we are increasingly surrounded by misleading, erroneous, or confusing visualizations. How can we educate the general masses about data visualization? We propose a twofold model for designing educational games in visualization based on the concept of constructivism and learning-by-playing. We base our approach on the idea of deconstruction and construction, borrowed from the domain of mathematics. We describe the conceptual development and design of our model through two games. First, we present a deconstruction-based game that requires the inspection, identification, and categorization of visualization characteristics (data, users, tasks, visual variables, visualization vocabulary), starting from a finalized visualization. Second, we propose a construction-based game where it is possible to compose visualizations bottom-up from individual visual characteristics. The two games use the same deck of cards with a simple design based on visualization taxonomies, popular in visualization teaching.