Representational Fidelity in Didactic Visualization: Toward a Multidimensional Design Space
Authors
Shehryar Saharan (University of Toronto), Michele Oliver (University of Guelph), Karen Gordon (University of Guelph), Gaël McGill (Harvard Medical School), Jodie Jenkinson (University of Toronto)
Presentation
- Session
- From design spaces to visual design
- Time
- Thursday, Nov 12, 13:00 – 13:12 (US/Eastern) · session 13:00 – 14:30
- Location
- Hall Essex north
Keywords
Representational fidelity, Didactic visualization, Visual representation, Realism, Abstraction
Abstract
Representational fidelity is routinely treated as a single abstract–realistic continuum, a simplification that limits how it is described and compared across research and design contexts. We introduce a multidimensional design space of representational fidelity for didactic visualization in science & engineering, inductively derived from a 175-item corpus spanning several disciplines, modalities, and instructional aims. The resulting design space specifies five dimensions: Morphological, Dynamic, Cueing, Contextual, and Interactive Fidelity, with seven sub-dimensions. We demonstrate the design space’s descriptive power through successive rounds of expansion and refinement and analyze the corpus to reveal relationships among dimensions and implications for design and research. We further validate the design space through a pilot focus group in which participants applied the dimensions in an open-ended design exercise. Resulting sketches and verbal rationales informed a single-designer applied case study, offering preliminary evidence of the design space's generative potential as a structured aid to design exploration. Together, these contributions lay the groundwork for future research and more intentional design practice.
For Practitioners
In addition to its research-focused use and application, this design space is intended for anyone who designs visuals meant to teach: medical and scientific illustrators, animators, interactive developers, textbook and courseware designers, museum and science-communication practitioners, and instructors in science and engineering who produce their own figures. Practitioners can apply the design space in three ways. First, as a vocabulary: it names representational decisions that are usually made tacitly, making them easier to explain to clients, collaborators, and students. Second, as a generative tool: designers can hold dimensions fixed and deliberately push others, producing variants that habitual practice may not surface - a use case that our focus group and applied case study both illustrate. Third, as a critique and teaching aid: it gives novice designers a structured entry point for reasoning about why a given representational choice works, rather than relying on accumulated intuition alone.