Co-creating Visualizations: A First Evaluation with Social Science Researchers

Co-creation is a design method where designers and domain experts work together to develop a product. In this paper, we present and evaluate the use of co-creation to design a visual information system with social science researchers in order to explore and analyze their data. Co-creation proposes involving the future users in the design process to ensure that they play a critical role in the design, and to increase the chances of long-term adoption. We evaluated the co-creation process through surveys, interviews and a user study. According to the participants’ feedback, they felt listened to through co-creation, and considered the methodology helpful to develop visualizations that support their research in the near future. However, participation was far from perfect, particularly early career researchers showed limited interest in participating because they did not see the process as beneficial for their research publication goals. We summarize benefits and limitations of co-creation, together with our recommendations, as lessons learned.