Revisiting the Need for Formal Education in Visualization

In a Visualization Viewpoints article published in 2000, Gitta Domik posed the question, Do we need formal education in visualization? Domik held that we do, and the reasons she gave are just as valid today: Careless production of visualizations leads to misinterpretation, the design of visualizations of complex data is not trivial, and increasingly decision making is based on data-generated images. The need for formal education leads to more questions though: What should be taught in a visualization course? Who should take visualization courses? Who should teach those courses? Domik focused on answers to the first question and presented a series of eight core visualization topics based on the Education for Visualization subcommittee work of the ACM Siggraph Education Committee. In revisiting the topic for this article we focus on all three questions, and discuss some issues raised at the IEEE Visualization 2006 Workshop on Visualization Education for Non-Technical Majors.