User-Centered Taxonomy for Urban Transportation Applications.

The widespread use of urban software and information technology infrastructure systems now demand new levels of complexity in data generation and data application across interoperating domains. Given this context, and discoveries in visual analytics research that reveal knowledge is created, verified, refined and shared through the interactive manipulation of the visualization (Pike et al. 2009), defining a taxonomy of visualizations can assist visualization system designers in understanding key visualization techniques that serve multiple linked user groups (Chengzhi et al. 2003). It could also be meaningful to others working in sectors that are now in the process of interoperating through the pervasive nature of digital economies. Understanding the potential components of a taxonomy for these forms of data visualization demands the identification of inter-relating and diverse user groups utilizing the same data for multiple tasks (Mahyar et al. 2015), the complexity of visualization processes, relevant task levels and interactions to supplement human insights. For example, a visualization displaying urban transit data might support the requirements of a wide array of users such as urban-designers, city-planners, data-scientists, engineers, transit-managers, pedestrians and transit users. This paper discusses the taxonomy design and prototype creation process for a user-centered taxonomy for urban transportation applications developed by the Visual Analytics Lab at OCAD University, as part of the VAL’s research and design contribution to the iCity research project, a collaboration between academic researchers, industry partners, city transportation planning departments and transit authorities that seeks to develop software support systems for transportation planning.