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Header image: visualizations of climate change, US food insecurity, and civilian casualties in the war in Yemen

When: Sunday 22 October, 2023 /Monday 23 October, 2023
Where: VIS 2023, Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre, Melbourne, Australia
Contact Us: vis4good-org@googlegroups.com, @vis4good

Welcome

We are proud to announce the third Workshop on Visualization for Social Good to be held as part of IEEE VIS 2023. The goal of this workshop is to:

provide a central venue within the IEEE VIS community for surfacing work that critiques, defines, or explores the impact of data visualization on society in order to build just and equitable futures.

Data is an inescapable part of our lives: it guides commerce, government, and technology, and increasingly determines what lives we can (or cannot) live. Data visualization has a special place within this emerging, data-driven, order: as a tool to inform or persuade mass audiences, guide or enlighten the specialist, or give a voice to the unheard. We therefore pose the question: how can visualization, and visualization research, help us build the worlds we want? This theme, building just and equitable futures, is the motivation behind the third edition of our recurring workshop at IEEE VIS: Visualization for Social Good. Our workshop series has been successful not only at showcasing high-quality socially-minded visualization research from diverse voices, but also in starting important conversations around the role of data visualization as a force for good in society at large. We invite you to join our workshop and growing community on Visualization for Social Good, to navigate conversations about the role of data in human dignity and flourishing.

Schedule

Coming Soon!

Call for Papers

We as designers, researchers, and technologists, have many opportunities ahead of us, as laid out in aspirational plans like the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering, and the NSF 10 Big Ideas. Yet, as the “techlash” continues, we are also seeing how technology has the power to magnify inequality, injustice, or other societal ills.

With the power that comes with collecting, interpreting, and communicating data in visualization, there is naturally a social responsibility. To do good and avoid harm, we should make our values as a field explicit, criticize and critique the work we do that has a potential for harm, develop a pedagogy around the socially responsible design and use of visualization, and develop good patterns for fruitful collaboration with stakeholders working on key societal problems.

To that end, we are soliciting work that deals with the social impact of visualization work. In order to focus the goals of our workshop, provide inspiration to potential attendees or submitters, and to reflect on the pressing issues of contemporary importance, we propose the following theme for the 2023 workshop: building just and equitable futures.

Some potential questions of interest include:

How can we adapt our ways of teaching, designing, or intervening in the face of imminent widespread societal, technological, or environmental change?
What audiences are included or excluded in our visualizations? How can data visualization be used to empower marginalized communities?
What role can data visualization play in promoting transparency and accountability in public and private sector decision making, especially as decision-making becomes increasingly automated and data-driven?

Contributions

Potential contributions might include (but are not limited to):

Design studies, “collaboration journals,” or other best practices for visualization work in domains with high social impact. Examples include:
Public health, development, and sustainable growth
Inclusivity, accessibility, and disability rights
Diversity, racial equality, and gender equality
Sustainability, ecology, and environmental activism
Explorations of design considerations for visualizations for mass audiences or policymakers. Examples include:
Building statistical or visualization literacy and fluency
Persuasion, misinformation, and deception
Accessibility
Critiques, manifestos, or provocations around social or ethical responsibilities in visualization design or research

Consult our resources page, 2021 workshop, 2022 workshop for sample works.

Submissions

Papers will be up to four pages, plus up to one page of references, in VGTC two-column format. Authors may elect to have their paper included archivally, or, per the authors’ request (e.g., for in-progress work), to have the work be presented but excluded from formal conference proceedings. The deadline for paper submissions is July 03, 2023.