Who Do We Mean When We Talk About Visualization Novices?

As more people rely on visualization to inform their personal and collective decisions, researchers have focused on a broader range of audiences, including “novices.” But successfully applying, interrogating, or advancing visualization research for novices demands a clear understanding of what “novice” means in theory and practice. Misinterpreting who a “novice” is could lead to misapplying guidelines and overgeneralizing results. In this paper, we investigated how visualization researchers define novices and how they evaluate visualizations intended for novices. We analyzed 79 visualization papers that used “novice,” “non-expert,” “laypeople,” or “general public” in their titles or abstracts. We found ambiguity within papers and disagreement between papers regarding what defines a novice. Furthermore, we found a mismatch between the broad language describing novices and the narrow population representing them in evaluations (i.e., young people, students, and US residents). We suggest directions for inclusively supporting novices in both theory and practice.