In visualization, the process of transforming raw data into visually comprehensible representations is pivotal. While existing models like the Information Visualization Reference Model describe the data-to-visual mapping process, they often overlook a crucial intermediary step: design-specific transformations. This process, occurring after data transformation but before visual-data mapping, further derives data, such as groupings, layout, and statistics, that are essential to properly render the visualization. In this paper, we advocate for a deeper exploration of design-specific transformations, highlighting their importance in understanding visualization properties, particularly in relation to user tasks. We incorporate design-specific transformations into the Information Visualization Reference Model and propose a new formalism that encompasses the user task as a function over data. The resulting formalism offers three key benefits over existing visualization models: (1) describing task as compositions of functions, (2) enabling analysis of data transformations for visual-data mapping, and (3) empowering reasoning about visualization correctness and effectiveness. We further discuss the potential implications of this model on visualization theory and visualization experiment design.

翻译：在可视化中，将原始数据转换为视觉可理解的表示过程至关重要。尽管现有的模型（如信息可视化参考模型）描述了数据到视觉的映射过程，但它们往往忽略了一个关键的中介步骤：面向设计的变换。这一过程发生在数据变换之后、视觉-数据映射之前，进一步推导出对正确渲染可视化至关重要的数据，例如分组、布局和统计信息。在本文中，我们主张对面向设计的变换进行更深入的探索，强调其在理解可视化属性（特别是与用户任务相关的属性）方面的重要性。我们将面向设计的变换纳入信息可视化参考模型，并提出一种新的形式化方法，将用户任务视为数据上的函数。与现有可视化模型相比，所得的形式化方法具有三个关键优势：（1）将任务描述为函数的组合；（2）能够分析用于视觉-数据映射的数据变换；（3）支持对可视化正确性和有效性的推理。我们进一步讨论了该模型对可视化理论和可视化实验设计的潜在影响。