1. Academic excellence for business and the professions
Using Information Visualization to
Support Creativity in Design
Graham Dove
Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice
graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk

2. Overview
• Background
– What type of design?
– Which kinds of information?
– Why information visualization and creativity?
• Case Study: Service design for energy industry
– Describe the visualization we used
– Describe how the visualization was used in design activities
– www.grahamdove.com/eon
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

3. What Type of Design?
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

4. What Type of Design?
• Early stage design research
– Exploring the problem or opportunity whilst the solution space is
still open-ended
• Participatory workshops
– Users and other stakeholders collaborate with us to share their
experiences and generate requirements
• Generative creativity
– Provide tools and facilitation skills to support participants’
creativity and idea generation by producing artefacts
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

5. Which Kinds of Information?
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

6. Which Kinds of Information?
• Government or open data
– Census information
– Public research data
• Social media data
– Twitter hashtags
• Data resulting from UbiComp
– Smart plug and smart meter
– Nike+ and Fitbit
– Mobile phones
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

7. Why Information Visualization & Creativity?
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

8. Why Information Visualization & Creativity?
• Information Visualization:
– Enables participants to explore quantitative data
– Supports insight into existing practices
• Creativity Techniques:
– Encourage participants to consider different possibilities
– Look at current or future practice in new ways
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

9. Case Study: Smart Home Service Design
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

10. Case Study: Background
• E.ON Research Initiative Project
– Investigating opportunities for new services offered by smart
meter data
– One day Creativity Workshop held in Milton Keynes
– Participants were E.ON customers taking part in a technology
trial
– Project partners IMDEA in Spain created a sophisticated model
of typical energy consumption patterns that we used to create
the examples visualized
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

11. Case Study: Visualization (www.grahamdove.com/eon)
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

12. Case Study: Visualization (www.grahamdove.com/eon)
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

13. Case Study: Visualization (www.grahamdove.com/eon)
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

14. Case Study: Smart Home Service Design
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

15. Case Study: Activities
• Motivation and Purpose
– Explore the context surrounding the data
– Ask why the data are how they are
• Methods
– Capturing insights and ideas in collage
– Storytelling and storyboarding
• Tools
– Interactive iPad visualization of energy consumption data
– Worksheets, photos, pens, scissors, etc.
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

16. Case Study: Who Lives Here?
• Imagine the household who are represented by the energy
consumption visualization
– Who lives here?
– What do they look like?
– What type of property is it?
– How do they feel about technology?
– What type of energy customer are they?
– How do they travel?
– What do their mealtimes look like?
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

17. Case Study: Who Lives Here?
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

18. Case Study: Activities
• Think about the ways that your imagined household could be
smarter in their use of energy
– Enter a competition in which the prize was to retro-fit the home
with the latest energy saving technology
– Explore the data to find 5 ways to be smarter in the way energy
is being used
• Reduce the amount of energy used
• Reduce the energy bill
– Tiebreaker: Describe the piece of smart home technology that
would most improve your life
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

19. Case Study: Smart Home Service Design
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

20. Case Study: Smart Home Service Design
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,
• Key workshop concepts
– A personal energy audit that is based upon analysis of a
households current energy use
– A system that learns from the household through the data it
collects
• Energy Audit: Prototype Service
– Combines smart meter data with model of typical consumption
patterns to create personalised predictive model
– Makes recommendations for ways the customer can save
energy or money

21. Case Study: Smart Home Service Design
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

22. Case Study: Smart Home Service Design
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,
• “Our group was engaged and excited. We really used the tech to
answer the Q's”
• “Easy to imagine the type of people in the house. My existing
knowledge fitted well with the issues raised by the data”
• “Yes it clearly helped you to understand patterns. Usage, timelines
and others quickly”
• “The iPad data visualisation was very useful as it made it
surprisingly easy to look at each piece of data….”

23. Future Work
• Investigate different styles of visualization
• Compare different creativity techniques
• Study where in the design process these techniques can be used
most effectively
• Explore the differences between individual and group work
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

24. Summary
• Ubiquitous computing means data is increasingly available and
increasingly important
• Information visualization can be used to explore current practices
• Creativity workshops can augment human-centred design
techniques by exploring new scenarios and opportunities
• Case studies are starting to show how we can combine information
visualization and creativity techniques
– But there is much more work still to do
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,

25. Thank You!
Email: graham.dove.1@ city.ac.uk
Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice
Demonstration workshop
ICL City 2013
Monday 13th May
http://creativity.city.ac.uk
17/04/2013 Graham Dove, Centre for HCID, City University London, graham.dove.1@city.ac.uk,