On Establishing Visualization Requirements: A Case Study in Product Costing

Abstract

The process of identifying visualization requirements is an important part of every visualization researcher's and practitioner's job. Nevertheless, the scientific literature is rather sparse on this topic, usually resorting to some form of user-centered design that is rarely further detailed. In this paper, we give an account of our procedure, our results, our problems and solutions for gathering visualization requirements in an ongoing business project to introduce visualization to the field of product costing. By providing insight in our experiences and extracting general points of advice from them, we aim to give some practical guidance for establishing requirements in real-world visualization projects.