Pre-Conference Talk by RUAN Shaolun | Qualitative Study for LLM-assisted Design Study Process: Strategies, Challenges, and Roles

Design studies aim to create visualization solutions for real-world problems of different application domains. Recently, the emergence of large language models (LLMs) has introduced new opportunities to enhance the design study process, providing capabilities such as creative problem-solving, data handling, and insightful analysis. However, despite their growing popularity, there remains a lack of systematic understanding of how LLMs can effectively assist researchers in visualization-specific design studies. In this paper, we conducted a multi-stage qualitative study to fill this gap, involving 30 design study researchers from diverse backgrounds and expertise levels. Through in-depth interviews and carefully-designed questionnaires, we investigated strategies for utilizing LLMs, the challenges encountered, and the practices used to overcome them. We further compiled and summarized the roles that LLMs can play across different stages of the design study process. Our findings highlight practical implications to inform visualization practitioners, and provide a framework for leveraging LLMs to enhance the design study process in visualization research.

This is a Pre-Conference talk for The 2025 IEEE Visualization and Visual Analytics Conference (IEEE VIS 2025).

Shaolun Ruan is currently a Ph.D. candidate in School of Computing and Information Systems at Singapore Management University (SMU). His research interests include Data Visualization and Human-Computer Interaction. His work focuses on developing human-centered computing tools to address complex scientific problems, facilitating the process of explainability and data-driven decision-making. He is the recipient of honors such as the Google PhD Fellowship, the IEEE VIS Best Paper Honorable Mention, the Dean's List award, and the SMU Presidential Doctoral Fellowship, etc. For more information, kindly visit https://shaolun-ruan.com/.