Prototype-driven design research often involves collecting and analyzing designed artifacts in annotated portfolios and design workbooks. These collections constitute important sources of intellectual influence for researchers, yet communicating this influence presents unique challenges, such as the difficulty of translating the aesthetic, material, or interactive qualities of a designed artifact into written text. Building on discourses of visual thinking and visual imagery in science communication and HCI research, this paper introduces, and elaborates, a novel research communication design concept called "visual references," which combine bibliographic information with photographic images, textual annotations, and diagrammatic annotations in order to communicate design-related intellectual influence.

1. TowardsVisual
References
Jordan E.Beck
Humanities,Social Science,and Communication
Milwaukee School of Engineering
Omar Sosa-Tzec (@omitzec)
Penny W.Stamps School of Art and Design
University of Michigan
John M.Carroll
College of Information Science and Technology
Pennsylvania State University
SIGDOC 2019:“Broadening the
Boundaries of Communication
Design”
October 5,2019
Portland,OR

2. Collection of examples of
research through design
outcomes
Annotations
Concept
Concept
Concept
Concept

4. “Speech (and writing) will
only provide a garbled and
incomplete translation of the
visual image”(Wallace,1978).

10. InteractionProfile
Receptivity
Attention
Demand
Independence Predictability
Awareness
Level
Pace/Time
Agency Freedom
of Action
Janlert & Stolterman (2018)

12. find standard
biblio info
a. Possible annotated portfolios/
design workbooks might contain
good source images
b. Screenshot images from
published manuscripts or
websites
c. Create from scratch (maybe call
this one out as more intensive
than the others)
find and document
relevant visual images
write textual
annotations
customize
diagrammatic
annotations
1
2
3
4

13. A key step in implementing something like
visual references would be securing
institutional buy-in from an organization
like the ACM.This would include thinking
through what would need to change in
current publishing models to make visual
references a more viable possibility.

14. For now,we see visual references as an
important complement to contemporary
scholarship on visual imagery in design-
oriented research–offering a new
perspective on how visual images might
factor more prominently into scholarly
communication as indicators of design-
related intellectual influence.

15. Thanks!
Questions?
Link to paper:
https://doi.org/10.1145/3328020.3353947
Jordan Beck: designinquiry.me
Omar Sosa-Tzec: tzec.com