2025/07/01 by Paul Parsons, Parsons, Paul C., Arran L. Ridley +1 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · Social Sciences · #Design Education and Practice #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Information Systems Theories and Implementation #Usability and User Interface Design
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.01209
openalex publication_date 2025/07/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Professional visualization design has become an increasingly important area of inquiry, yet much of the field's discourse remains anchored in researcher-centered contexts. Studies of design practice often focus on individual designers' decisions and reflections, offering limited insight into the collaborative and systemic dimensions of professional work. In this paper, we propose a systems-level reframing of design judgment grounded in the coordination and adaptation that sustain progress amid uncertainty, constraint, and misalignment. Drawing on sustained engagement across multiple empirical studies--including ethnographic observation of design teams and qualitative studies of individual practitioners--we identify recurring episodes in which coherence was preserved not by selecting an optimal option, but by repairing alignment, adjusting plans, and reframing goals. We interpret these dynamics through the lens of Joint Cognitive Systems, which provide tools for analyzing how judgment emerges as a distributed capacity within sociotechnical activity. This perspective surfaces often-invisible work in visualization design and offers researchers a new conceptual vocabulary for studying how design activity is sustained in practice.