Pia Pedersen is a Ph.D. scholar in the Department of Communication Design at the Kolding School of Design.

In her Ph.D. project Pia Pedersen explores the role of designers in data visualisation, that is, visual presentations of statistical information. Data visualisation is an interdisciplinary field that involves, among others, statisticians and designers along with journalists, researchers and politicians. That may result in conflict between different disciplinary approaches and traditions. For example, statisticians may feel that designers tend to present the data in an overly simplified or colourful manner in their visualisations. Designers, on the other hand, may not feel that the statisticians’ material is capable of optimising the users’ grasp of the information.

In her Ph.D. project Pia Pedersen takes her point of departure in the design process and in various design strategies. She examines what happens when designers are involved in data visualisation, and the effect that the designer’s transformation process has on the design of the data visualisation. The purpose of the project is to give designers new strategies to draw on when they enter the interdisciplinary field of data visualisation. Pia Pedersen wants to give the designer the right tools for acting in a transformational role rather than the role of decorator. The designer should be able to elicit meaning from the numbers in a statistical data set and to transform the data so that it makes sense to laypeople.
 
The Ph.D. project is based on articles and falls into four main sections:
Pia Pedersen sets out by taking a historical perspective of data visualisation. In the past, the most important developments in the field of data visualisation came mainly from journalists, politicians and scientists. Today, designers play a greater role in the process, and Pia Pedersen examines the impact of this on today’s data visualisation.

The second part of the project focuses on the design process. Pia Pedersen teaches at the Kolding School of Design and uses observations of the students in her Ph.D. project. Thus, she studies how design students handle the design process in relation to data visualisation. In addition, she interviews professional designers working in Danish design firms.

The third part of her project deals with aesthetics and function. Here, Pia Pedersen analyses how aesthetics impacts function. For example, there is a limit to how much a designer can simplify data before the data stops being meaningful.

Sometimes, a particular presentation of statistical material manages to reach and affect people in a way that makes them subsequently alter their behaviour. When and how the topic and the data visualisation come together to accomplish this is an issue that Pia Pedersen explores in the fourth part of the project.

Pia Pedersen graduated as a designer from the Kolding School of Design in 2005. After a few years as a practicing designer working with information graphics, in 2009 she became a research assistant at the Kolding School of Design.

Keywords Data visualisation, transformation, design process, design strategies, statistics, aesthetics and function, behaviour, perception, cognition, emotion, Isotypes