An important aspect in visualization design is the connection between what a designer does and the decisions the designer makes. Existing design process models, however, do not explicitly link back to models for visualization design decisions. We bridge this gap by introducing the design activity framework, a process model that explicitly connects to the nested model, a wellknown visualization design decision model. The framework includes four overlapping activities that characterize the design process, with each activity explicating outcomes related to the nested model. Additionally, we describe and characterize a list of exemplar methods and how they overlap among these activities. The design activity framework is the result of reflective discussions from a collaboration on a visualization redesign project, the details of which we describe to ground the framework in a real-world design process. Lastly, from this redesign project we provide several research outcomes in the domain of cybersecurity, including an extended data abstraction and rich opportunities for future visualization research.
We propose a multivariate volume visualization framework that tightly couples dynamic projections with a high-dimensional transfer function design for interactive volume visualization. We assume that the complex, high-dimensional data in the attribute space can be well-represented through a collection of low-dimensional linear subspaces, and embed the data points in a variety of 2D views created as projections onto these subspaces. Through dynamic projections, we present animated transitions between different views to help the user navigate and explore the attribute space for effective transfer function design. Our framework not only provides a more intuitive understanding of the attribute space but also allows the design of the transfer function under multiple dynamic views, which is more flexible than being restricted to a single static view of the data.