Abstract This article demonstrates the value of positioning theory as a lens for localizing information design in culturally resonant ways. Drawing on 40+ interviews with residents in a Southwestern U.S. community experiencing water scarcity, we develop a positioning theory–based codebook to analyze self-, other-, and collective positionings around responsibility, power, and inaction. This method reveals relational patterns that thematic coding alone might overlook, offering information designers a methodological approach for clarifying how people in communities express and negotiate responsibility and capacity to act. Positioning theory thereby expands the field’s methodological toolkit and introduces localized perspectives that can help information designers create interactions that can foster participation and collective environmental action.
Abstract This paper examines the epistemological development of modern Chinese pattern design. Through an analysis of historical literature, it argues that the formation of early Chinese design knowledge was not merely an extension of technical rationality, but was rooted in a broader epistemological framework shaped by ethical cultivation and social instruction. This framework is characterized by two localized features: idea preceding form and form shaped according to material conditions. It emphasizes not only the application of natural principles but also humanistic concern and ethical responsibility. This perspective offers new epistemological insights and methodological inspiration for contemporary information design.
Abstract This article reactivates the interrupted legacy of Project Cybersyn by reconfiguring Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model as a participatory infrastructure for information design. Through workshops with twelve Latin American diaspora participants in the UK, we demonstrate three methodological innovations: (1) cultural citation, which reactivates 1970s visual materials alongside contemporary institutional documents; (2) an approach that privileges affective and relational engagement over data extraction; and (3) the workshop-as-deliverable, which reconceptualizes participatory encounters as legitimate design outputs. Counter-visualizations produced through collage and collective annotation challenge universalist conventions while remaining accountable to situated knowledge. This work positions information design as a cultural practice grounded in specific trajectories, offering methodological alternatives to extractive research patterns.
Abstract The cultural turn exposes the limitations of code-based models that treat communication as the encoding and decoding of fixed symbols. This article advances Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory as a framework for understanding culturally situated communication. Rather than treating communication as the transmission of codes, Relevance Theory conceptualizes human interaction as an ostensive-inferential process, in which communicators make their intentions manifest and audiences infer meaning guided by expectations of relevance. Within this framework, designed artifacts can function as ostensive stimuli when their features signal communicative intent and invite interpretation. Drawing on an Indigenous Māori case study, we demonstrate how this approach enables culturally responsive information design by reconciling universal cognitive architecture with cultural variability to foster mutual manifestness across diverse contexts.
Abstract In 1968, Margaret Mead said that the most significant component of a system is the person who creates the model of that system. When we take data, and translate it into form, how do we insert ourselves — our cultural perceptions and biases — into that process? This paper presents informational graphics created by the first author during an 18-month long study of civic crowdfunding, a process whereby activists use digitally driven fundraising to develop value for their communities ( Light & Briggs, 2017 ). These diagrams were created using varied co-creative methods that sought to be inclusive, localized, and critically reflexive.
This study employs a critical information design lens to interrogate whose knowledge is represented and whose voices are excluded in public transport systems. Focusing on migrant workers in Dubai, UAE, it foregrounds issues of equity, representation, and participation in the design of mobility-related information. Drawing on field observations and a participatory workshop with eleven participants, the research brings forward overlooked narratives of navigating buses, metro, and water transport. The findings demonstrate how critical information design can amplify marginalized voices, foster inclusion, and reimagine transport information infrastructures as socially responsive and contextually grounded — moving beyond a narrow focus on clarity and efficiency.
This paper examines participatory data physicalization as a mode of public engagement. Building on the shift from the Quantified Self to a Quantified Us , the study investigates how data can enable shared meaning-making and intercultural dialogue beyond individual reflection. Culture is understood here as encompassing identity differences, knowledge perspectives, symbolic associations, and lived contexts of interpretation. Using a Research through Design methodology, nine wellness-focused installations deployed in university campus public spaces revealed five recurring design dimensions: material affordances and metaphors, participation framing, interpretive flexibility and situated meaning, peer visibility and intercultural encounter, and publicness as cultural care. Findings show that participatory data physicalization can serve as civic infrastructure, where data is not only represented but also co-authored, negotiated, and encountered as a living communal resource. Shared concerns around identity, community, and emotion foster resonance across differences while sustaining plurality and ambiguity. This work contributes to the cultural turn in information design by positioning participatory data engagement as a practice of recognition, solidarity, and civic connection.
In Indonesia, dogs often face social and religious resistance, which increases their vulnerability after abandonment. This study investigates how different storytelling formats — visual vs. textual and AI-generated vs. human-created — affect emotional responses to dog-related narratives. Using a quantitative experimental design with 135 participants and the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM), results show that human-written texts significantly influence both valence and arousal, while AI-generated text affect valence only. ANOVA and post-hoc tests reveal that human-created illustrations elicit higher pleasure and lower arousal, whereas AI-generated images score higher in dominance. These findings offer insights into designing culturally sensitive, emotionally resonant communication strategies for promoting animal welfare.
This article examines how grassroots menstrual health advocates re-author global communication templates into culturally resonant designs. Drawing on multimodal artifacts and interviews from South Asia, East Africa, and Latin America, I examine typography, color, layout, iconography, and infrastructural strategies as rhetorical resources that redistribute authority, create emotional safety, and sustain circulation under fragile conditions. From this analysis, I propose the Culturally Responsive Information Design (CRID) framework: community epistemic authority, responsive design adaptation, infrastructural responsiveness, and decolonized translation processes. CRID advances the cultural turn in information design and offers guidance for UX, technical communication, and public health scholars and practitioners.
This paper details the process of indigenizing an Arizona water chatbot. Initial attempts to integrate tribal data, adopt an Indigenous worldview, and apply the Two-Eyed Seeing framework were unsuccessful, leading to inappropriate outputs and potential harm. The turning point came when we reframed bias as evidence and our embodied reactions as data, enabling an epistemological reorientation toward relational sense-making. We argue that, to serve Indigenous communities effectively, information design must address these fundamental epistemological conflicts. Our work offers a model for creating more attuned, decolonial AI chatbot interfaces that have wide-reaching potential.
The clear structuring of text is important for assisting readers with understanding, searching and navigating a document. Headings are a key indicator of the structure of a text, but best practice to create visual hierarchy for headings needs to be better understood. This study compared seven typographic methods for emphasizing headings in both print and screen presentations using a paired comparison study to test which methods of typographic differentiation creates headings which are easiest to identify in text. This research found that headings with the greatest typographic weight are considered easiest to identify in both print and screen-based texts.
Diagrams are widely used in educational, instructional, and communication contexts, however affective responses to diagrams with the potential to influence motivation, learning, and behavior, have been overlooked. This paper presents a mixed-methods study, employing focus groups ( N = 17) and a survey experiment ( N = 194) to examine how visual context (a contextual background scene) in biological life cycle diagrams impacts affective responses. Results showed that the inclusion of visual context led to a modest increase in associative/affective empathy ( T (191) = 1.943, p = .027, d = 0.281). These findings demonstrate that visual design choices during the development of instructional graphics can have an impact on affective responses, in this case associative/affective empathy, with potentially important implications for education and communication settings.
Abstract Interactive maps play a key role in generating and mediating research knowledge in human-centered urban planning, yet their design principles remain underexplored. This paper draws on feminist geography, cultural studies, and information visualization to inform the design of interactive maps. It argues that interactive maps can reveal the interplay between social and built spaces by enabling comparisons across different time periods and infrastructural conditions. Using visualizations from MIT’s Senseable City Lab, it shows how interactive exploration enables users to engage in visual argumentation, while emphasizing multiple perspectives and uses to allow for more inclusive representations of urban life and its social complexities.
Abstract This study explored the effectiveness of outbreak data dashboards in presenting relevant information during global health emergencies using mouse-tracking measures. Firstly, several problems in the visual design and information layout of the dashboard were identified by analyzing the path, mouse-movements and clicks made by users when using the dashboard. Secondly, suggestions on the process of how dashboards were used and their design were collected through user feedback and follow-up interviews during the experimental process. The results of the study provide insights into user-centered design solutions for visual dashboards, which can guide the design of similar epidemiological dashboards in the future.
This research explores typographic adjustments, specifically letter width, and their impact on patients with various visual conditions. These patients were divided into three groups of interest according to the visual condition they presented: blurry vision (N = 15), central vision loss (N = 11) and peripheral vision loss (N = 15). There was also a control group (N = 14). In an acuity experiment, six typeface variations were tested. Point sizes were used as a measurement of acuity. Results revealed that larger letter widths affected each one of the groups differently. These findings align with recent literature, which highlights that the effect typographic variables exert on readers varies depending on their visual condition.
This research investigates design-relevant information to accompany physical material samples, addressing a gap in educational product/industrial design practice and materials library usage. Implementing Research Through Design (RTD), existing information solutions are surveyed (Stage 1); ten material information tag ‘research artefacts’ are generated (Stage 2); and artefact evaluations are carried out by 38 undergraduates, leading to a Design Specification Master List (Stage 3). A finalized tag is designed based on the research findings. The study contributes knowledge on the content and presentation of materials information, demonstrates a systematic approach to evaluating research artefacts within an RTD framework, and discusses its applicability across conventional and emerging material contexts and practices.
Digital maps are essential tools for modern wayfinding, often relying on live GPS location features for successful use. However, complex urban environments can make it difficult for users to spatially locate themselves and navigate areas such as building entrances and vertical pathways. This investigation used a campus environment as a case study to examine the impact of visualized map information that is often overlooked in current digital maps. A multi-stage user-centered design process was employed to develop and test a redesigned map. Results show that the implementation of additional map visualization design practices significantly improves navigation performance.
User Interface (UI) design and User Experience (UX) design are essential for the creation of digital products such as web and application designs (Digital Product Design), as they influence user interaction and engagement. UX and UI contribute primarily to aesthetics and visual communication, whereas interactive disciplines focus on usability, interactivity, and user experience. There has been considerable interest in user experience among researchers, which is largely due to the ever-increasing use of the internet in both domestic and industrial contexts. The fields of user interfaces (UIs) and user experience (UX) in particular, have received substantial attention. This is because both UI and UX contribute to an effective interactive visual design and are key to the success of any electronic product. The current study presents an overview of research into UX and UI over the last three decades (from 1990 to 2023). A total of 1,902 publications from this period were identified from the Scopus database. These publications were visualized and analyzed using VOSviewer and Microsoft Excel, enabling the most up to date research on UX to be brought to light. The results from this study provide an assessment of the current developments in UX and UI, as well as directions for future research on a number of aspects of digital product design.
