3 case studies: a hybrid educational strategy for ART/SCI collaborations

In this paper we report on a transdisciplinary university course designed to bring together fine art/visual communication design and computer science students for the creation and implementation of collaborative visual/audio projects that draw upon the specialized knowledge of both these disciplines. While an overview of the syllabus and the teaching methodologies is undertaken in the introduction, the focus of the paper concentrates upon an in-depth discussion and analysis of 3 specific projects that were developed by 3 distinct teams of students comprised of one artist/designer and one engineer each

The structure of the Arts & Humanities Citation Index: A mapping on the basis of aggregated citations among 1,157 journals

Using the Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) 2008, we apply mapping techniques previously developed for mapping journal structures in the Science and Social Science Citation Indices. Citation relations among the 110,718 records were aggregated at the level of 1,157 journals specific to the A&HCI, and the journal structures are questioned on whether a cognitive structure can be reconstructed and visualized. Both cosine-normalization (bottom up) and factor analysis (top down) suggest a division into approximately twelve subsets. The relations among these subsets are explored using various visualization techniques. However, we were not able to retrieve this structure using the ISI Subject Categories, including the 25 categories which are specific to the A&HCI. We discuss options for validation such as against the categories of the Humanities Indicators of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the panel structure of the European Reference Index for the Humanities (ERIH), and compare our results with the curriculum organization of the Humanities Section of the College of Letters and Sciences of UCLA as an example of institutional organization

Engaging stakeholders in research to address water-energy-food (WEF) nexus challenges

The water–energy–food (WEF) nexus has become a popular, and potentially powerful, frame through which to analyse interactions and interdependencies between these three systems. Though the case for transdisciplinary research in this space has been made, the extent of stakeholder engagement in research remains limited with stakeholders most commonly incorporated in research as end-users. Yet, stakeholders interact with nexus issues in a variety of ways, consequently there is much that collaboration might offer to develop nexus research and enhance its application. This paper outlines four aspects of nexus research and considers the value and potential challenges for transdisciplinary research in each. We focus on assessing and visualising nexus systems; understanding governance and capacity building; the importance of scale; and the implications of future change. The paper then proceeds to describe a novel mixed-method study that deeply integrates stakeholder knowledge with insights from multiple disciplines. We argue that mixed-method research designs—in this case orientated around a number of cases studies—are best suited to understanding and addressing real-world nexus challenges, with their inevitable complex, non-linear system characteristics. Moreover, integrating multiple forms of knowledge in the manner described in this paper enables research to assess the potential for, and processes of, scaling-up innovations in the nexus space, to contribute insights to policy and decision making

Geoweb 2.0 for Participatory Urban Design: Affordances and Critical Success Factors

In this paper, we discuss the affordances of open-source Geoweb 2.0 platforms to support the participatory design of urban projects in real-world practices.We first introduce the two open-source platforms used in our study for testing purposes. Then, based on evidence from five different field studies we identify five affordances of these platforms: conversations on alternative urban projects, citizen consultation, design empowerment, design studio learning and design research. We elaborate on these in detail and identify a key set of success factors for the facilitation of better practices in the future

Design by immersion: A transdisciplinary approach to problem-driven visualizations

While previous work exists on how to conduct and disseminate insights from problem-driven visualization work and design studies, the literature does not address how to accomplish these goals in transdisciplinary teams in ways that advance all disciplines involved. In this paper we introduce and define a new methodological paradigm we call design by immersion, which provides an alternative perspective on problem-driven visualization work. Design by immersion embeds transdisciplinary experiences at the center of the visualization process by having visualization researchers participate in the work of the target domain (or domain experts participate in visualization research). Based on our own combined experiences of working on cross-disciplinary, problem-driven visualization projects, we present six case studies that expose the opportunities that design by immersion enables, including (1) exploring new domain-inspired visualization design spaces, (2) enriching domain understanding through personal experiences, and (3) building strong transdisciplinary relationships. Furthermore, we illustrate how the process of design by immersion opens up a diverse set of design activities that can be combined in different ways depending on the type of collaboration, project, and goals. Finally, we discuss the challenges and potential pitfalls of design by immersion

Material Translation: Validation and Visualization as Transdisciplinary Methods for Textile Design and Materials Science in the Circular Bioeconomy

This paper presents a textile design and materials science collaboration during two design residencies in a materials science laboratory for regenerated cellulose research. The first residency evidenced that both disciplines are connected through a materials practice in communication and production of materials. This paper presents the aims of design and scientific research in materials experimentation and the scale of materials in each discipline. The cross-disciplinary collaboration developed transdisciplinary methods for textile design and materials science towards circularity of materials in a bioeconomy. A model for material affinity highlights these two new approaches between the design vision of the textiles designer and scientific method in materials science: validation and visualization. The collaboration led to establishing cellulose-based films as a process that can be made in both the design studio and the science laboratory. This paper presents how textile design prototyping in the materials science laboratory during the second residency was informed by scientific method in a transdisciplinary method of validation. Scientific communication of research is here presented as adopting visualization methods from design. Translation is presented as a term for the design-science material experiments taking place in the science laboratory in the collaboration between the authors. Improved communication between technical scientists and textile designers is needed to achieve circularity of regenerated cellulose materials in the emerging bioeconomy. This paper addresses translation as a process taking place during textile design residencies in the material science laboratory. The material experiments improved cross-disciplinary communication at the convergence of scientific method, design vision, visualization and validation processes

Journalism visualization devices: six visual modes of seeing

The growing number of visualization devices in the online jour- nalism world draws attention to the mechanisms both technical and symbolic that build the relation between the producer and the user in the interaction with the device. This relation has been studied in different approaches and empirical research; some of them related to the visual studies field. This paper aims to con- tribute to the study of the visual aspects of this relation through the analysis of the implicit representation of the user that the producer depicts into the device. This symbolic approach tends to find the guidance operation for interaction as a prescriptive model of information consumption focused in the visual representation. This paper propose six-visual modes for this guidance operation as the established models in the current online journalism: (1) visualization of events, (2) visualization of hidden issues, (3) visualization of spaces, (4) visualization of narratives, (5) visuali- zation of the subject involved with data and (6) visualization of convergences. These six modes are defined and their characteris- tics explicated