Design of the Visualizer for intuitive communication

 

 

The following section describes the design process of the visualiser that was embedded in Deliverable 6.3.

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Metrics integration into one intuitive visual tool 

The development of a visualisation tool started with a simple 2D design that can visualize the complex relations embedded in the SUSFANS metrics approach. Here objectives were for it to make visible the trade-offs in food systems in a manner that is transparent and can support dialogue on decision-making. Arguably, well-designed portrayal of a systems perspective can improve actors’ capability to evaluate how certain decisions of actions can affect people or dynamics. The first version of the visualisation (See Figure 3 in D6.3), much alike a spider diagram, showcased SUSFANS metrics of the EU food system was therefore geared towards the following objectives: 

• “Show the status of the EU food system with respect to policy goals today; 
• Allow the user to look across all policy goals at the same time; 
• Allow the user to assess changes to the food system’s performance when introducing innovations; 
• Visualize synergies and trade-offs across policy goals for the selected innovations to enable an informed discussion about which innovations to pursue.”

During this initial design stage, there were two points that had priority in order for the development of a successful diagram. First, key to the design of the visualizer was the need for intuitive interpretation of the data. This resulted in a diagram that uses ‘pie wedges’ that represent a policy goal. The closer the red wedge in the middle gets to the performance metrics (i.e. the bigger the wedge gets) the closer the food system gets towards achieving the formulated goals and their targets. A second key criteria was the ability to inform one’s understanding of the food system, by giving insights into the metrics behind the SUSFANS approach. Therefore, the idea was to include these layers of data by having figures that show the ‘unfolded’ aggregation (See Figure 4 in D6.3), allowing one to browse through the metrics. 

The introduction of new food system innovations and their dynamics of change, has been another element in SUSFANS. Comparison of the ‘baseline’ status and the outcomes of a modelled scenario also needed to be possible in the design of the visualizer. To accommodate this, the visualizer was designed as to show different scenarios. At this stage, this was primarily in a static version. While there were some design challenges embedded in such a static version of the visualizer – something that could e.g. make visuals to go into a report, we chose this design as we considered it a promising starting point for an interactive version.

Serious gaming influences for better user-experience 

A next ambition within the project was to make the visualizer interactive, allowing for users to ‘play’ with the system and see implications of changes introduced. However, before the next phase in the development of the visualizer, the data across all elements needed to be modelled, integrated, and converted to the policy targets used in the visualizer. The result of this is reported in Frank et al. (2019).
In order to create a user-friendly visualizer, a collaboration with game developers was started. The use of serious gaming for communication of research and science is growing, as it has the ability to reach a wider audience than traditional communication and above all, is very directed towards crafted a pleasant user-experience – in terms of aesthetics, but also when it comes to intuitive comprehension. In collaboration with a game design team, the plan for the visualizer was adjusted in order to make the visualization feasible in the short time frame and also understandable for the user. 

The first step was the recreation of the static visualizer in a web-version which stayed true to the design of the static version. Here, the pie wedges were programmed in a way that they could change and move between the data points of different scenarios. Based on a dummy dataset, a prototype of the visualizer was made. Followed were several rounds of refining and adding ‘buttons’ to the interface, allowing users to choose between scenarios (See Figure 5 in D6.3).
The initial plan of letting the aggregate indicators ‘unfold’ was deemed impossible in this current design – and timeframe. This would have resulted in too much information on the page, undoing the intuitive interpretation of the visualizer. Decided instead was to differently portray this information and ensure transparency on the indicators. Therefore, parts of the will visualizer also provide options for more information. 

By hovering with the mouse over a certain element of the visualizer, a short description of what that element entails will appear. When it is clicked, the user will be redirected to another, new tab in the browser, which shows information about that metric, or performance metrics in more detail. This will include both detailed information from the D6.3 and short popular scientific descriptions, to create more transparency on the SUSFANS approach. Clear in the visual shown in Figure 5 (see D6.3) is that certain elements are lacking data. We have decided to include these nonetheless for two main reasons. First, to flag their importance to food system assessment. Second, to be transparent about the lack of metrics and data that could complete this assessment, giving direction to further research