Design and Data: Strategies for Designing Information Products in Team Settings

This chapter aims at linking data and information to creative design, focusing on collaborative processes at early phases of the design with data. The chapter aims at providing clarity in a large space around design and data. Thus, it serves as a guide for design team’s approach towards the challenges of data design. Consequently, design is one of the key disciplines involved in data and information visualization (Moere and Purchase 2011). This chapter starts with a short introduction of ideas and concepts in the intersection of data, information, and design. It looks at users and designers as the main stakeholders, and considered the purpose of designed information. Following this introduction, we first focus on design artifacts essential for collaborative data design practices. Secondly, we focus on what it means to integrate data with design and the potential roles of data in the data design process. The chapter outlines a general design process with methods and approaches towards early design challenges. Furthermore, this chapter concludes with an annotated bibliography to guide further reading. Along the chapter runs an example case of a real information product that helps for better understanding. It links the more theoretical elaborations to the application level of a concrete design case.