The Next Billion Users of Visualization

We argue that visualization research has overwhelmingly focused on users from the economically developed world. However, billions of people around the world are rapidly emerging as new users of information technology. Most of the next billion users of visualization technologies will come from parts of the world that are extremely populous but historically ignored by the visualization research community. Their needs may be different to the types of users that researchers have targeted in the past, but, at the same time, they may have even more to gain in terms of access to data potentially affecting their quality of life. We propose a call to action for the visualization community to identify opportunities and use cases where users can benefit from visualization; develop universal design principles; extend evaluations by including the general population; and engage with a wider global population.