2024/11/13 by Swaroop Panda, Panda, Swaroop · 2 citations
Engineering · #Design Education and Practice #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2411.08621
openalex publication_date 2024/11/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Thought experiments are considered valuable tools in science, enabling the exploration of hypotheses and the examination of complex ideas in a conceptual, non-empirical framework. These thought experiments can be useful in design fiction for speculating future possibilities, examining existing and alternate scenarios in new ways or challenging current paradigms. In visualization, speculating future possibilities or exploring new ways of interpreting existing scenarios can provoke critical reflection and envision novel approaches. In this paper we present such thought experiments for visualization. We conceptualize and define a thought experiment to consist of a situation, a story, and a scenario. Situations are derived from different tools of thought experiments and visualization practice; a story is an AI-generated fiction based on the situation and the scenario is the grounding of the situation and story in visualization research. We present ten such thought experiments and demonstrate their utility in visualization by deriving critiques from them.