Reflection – Visualization

Challenge & Selection

The one I use most frequently is a visual tool. Visualized presentation often allows groups  with different knowledge and cultural backgrounds to get the exact message that the speaker  intends to convey. I am an interdisciplinary scientist whose research fields include materials  science, electrochemistry and environmental science. Therefore, my research results usually  need to enable readers with different academic backgrounds to quickly obtain the knowledge  and data they need without consulting other materials. In a study on the reprocessing of  waste vegetables for environmental protection, the results of our study need to be elaborated  in combination with studies in the three fields. Therefore, my group chose a visual  experimental process to eliminate misunderstandings that may arise from different fields of  expertise.

Application

We used a combination of cartoon flow chart and animated diagram to express the process  and main results of the experiment. We named this kind of visualized presentation FCG, which  means the flow chart with GIFs for details.   The part of cartoon flow chart allows readers with different research backgrounds to quickly  find the core points of the research. In this research on materials for the use of waste  vegetables for environmental protection purposes, the cartoon flow chart very briefly  describes the material preparation process and the performance characteristics of the  resulting electrochemical materials. This description is easy to understand for the materials  researcher, and saves the environmental worker and electrochemistry researcher the time to  supplement the material science background for the material preparation process.  In the annotated GIFs section, we use real image shooting and dynamic flowchart nesting to  include the parts that may be of interest to environmental science and materials science  without burdening electrochemistry researchers.  Therefore, FCG structure has been proved to be a very convenient and efficient  communication tool in this research activity. Our research was confirmed by experts in three  fields and successfully summarized for publication

Insight & Approach

After this study, we believe that Visualization based FCG structures have unexpected  advantages in explaining cross-domain research. Its application is not limited to the three  studies mentioned above. By adjusting the scale and content contained in cartoon flow charts  and GIFs, the FCG process can be adapted to a variety of concise expressions of

interdisciplinary research. It is even possible to use cartoonish flowcharts as annotations to  GIFS in turn to accommodate interdisciplinary research biased towards the latter. More  interestingly, we find that this expression seems to be more appropriate for today's digital  knowledge acquisition. In addition, it is more convenient to introduce some cutting-edge  research that requires rich background knowledge to the public in a popular science way. This  structure can also eliminate the possibility of errors caused by different understandings  between frontier researchers and popular science material makers in a specific experimental  link.  Nowadays, people pay more and more attention to the efficiency and accuracy of knowledge  demand, visualization tools will inevitably have more and more changes in form to adapt to  and solve various problems in the expression and dissemination of knowledge.

