2023 conference held in Melbourne, Australia, the paper titled Affective Visualization Design: Leveraging the Emotional Impact of Data, authored by Lan Xingyu, an assistant professor from the School of Journalism at Fudan University, was awarded the Best Paper.
This award represents a breakthrough for Chinese universities in the field of data visualization research. IEEE VIS is widely recognized as the top international conference in the visualization field, and accepted papers will be published in the SCI Q1 journal, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics. This is the first time in the 33-year history of the IEEE VIS conference (since its establishment in 1990) that the Best Paper award has been given to a research paper completed entirely by authors from Asian universities. It is also the first time that a first author from mainland China has won the Best Paper award at this conference.
The paper focuses on cutting-edge issues in the field of visualization in recent years: the user experience of data, especially how to enhance the expressiveness and information communication efficiency of data through emotion and storytelling. The paper systematically summarizes the methods and applications of affective expression in data visualization through extensive literature reviews and empirical analysis of in-the-wild cases, as well as clarifies key theoretical concepts.
The justification for the award is:
“In an area that has only recently been recognised for its importance, this paper stands out in providing a comprehensive review and evaluation of emotionally affective visualization design. With its systematic structuring of 170 surveyed papers and designs, along with a nuanced discussion of affective design form and motivation, it provides an important contribution to the community. It moves us beyond a collection of disparate design examples by establishing a foundational design space and framework relating design technique, thematic genre and task. In doing so, it provides an important step for future work to evaluate and improve affective design in visualization.”
Data visualization is the combination of science and humanities, and research in this field involves various interdisciplinary knowledge, such as arts, sciences, and engineering. In today's world, with the increasing prevalence of big data and artificial intelligence as the new infrastructure, it holds great theoretical and practical significance to form interdisciplinary teams and explore the impact of data on humanity and society from diverse and complementary perspectives.
This paper was a collaboration between the School of Journalism at Fudan University and the College of Design and Innovation at Tongji University. Previously, this interdisciplinary team has published a series of high-quality and internationally recognized academic research results surrounding the topic of intelligent data visualization design and communication, including over 10 SCI/SSCI papers, and has received national-level research awards. By incorporating research perspectives from multiple disciplines, they aim to bridge the gap between theoretical and applied research, making academic achievements serve the country, society, and enterprises.
