Visual inquiry includes diving deeply into how we see and represent complex systems. This series of images explores imperfectly overlapping and entangled organic systems as inspiration for thinking beyond standard approaches to visualizing data.
By designing personal informatics visualizations with people managing chronic serious mental illness, this work explores the impacts of standardized and normative approaches to representing our experiences through data.
Led by researchers at Seattle Children's Hospital, our team is developing visual tools to support shared decision-making among pediatric patients with chronic kidney disease, caregivers, and clinicians.
Using visual inquiry and speculative design methods to better understand the datafication of human experiences
The Visualization Studies Research Studio (VSRS) is led by Jaime Snyder, Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington. We design speculative and exploratory visual encoding systems to probe the experience of datafication—the process by which our embodied, lived experiences are made computationally legible. Using image-making as a form of inquiry and communication, our projects .
VSRS encompasses work ranging from conceptual explorations of visualization and datafication to applied community-engaged projects in domains such as public engagement in science, personal informatics, digital mental health, and health informatics for collaborative decision-making.
Personal timelines created by study participants encoding their experiences with bipolar disorder. Read more >
Recent Publications
Jaime Snyder, Seth M. Asafo, Dzifa A. Attah, Pamela Y. Collins, Angela Ofori-Atta, Dror Ben-Zeev (forthcoming). “Sociolinguistic Coordination Devices in Cross-Cultural Co-Design Interactions,” CoDesign Journal.
Annuska Zoloymi and Jaime Snyder (2024). “An Emotion Translator: Speculative Design By Neurodiverse Dyads,” ACM SIG CHI 2024.
Annuska Zolyomi and Jaime Snyder (2023). “Designing for Common Ground: Visually Representing Conversation Dynamics of Neurodiverse Dyads,” Proc. ACM Hum.-Comput. Interact (CSCW 2023).