Human reasoning and communication highly rely on visual impression and visual media. For thus, the proposed session addresses a wide scope of aspects and perspectives related to analog and digital visual media and knowledge. We’d like to invite contributions focusing on the topic from theoretical and practical points of view.

Knowledge related effects of visual media
There are various effects visual media, in terms of physical objects, photographs, texts, and maps, have on human reasoning and knowledge building. According to semiotics, all visual entities represent a certain meaning (Morris, 1938). Certain geometric shapes, for example, are recognised by humans as letters and words with a certain meaning. Graphical shapes like arrows direct the human vision. These effects do not only rely on individual cultural or professional backgrounds – i.e. an archaeologist focusses on other aspects when seeing a depiction of an ancient shrine as an architectural engineer does (Goodwin, 1994, Simon, 1990). In addition, it is influenced by the context or “frame” the visual asset is presented in as well as for knowledge embedded or “embodied” into a visual media. Last but not least, visual perception and reasoning is highly influenced by the properties or “Gestalt” of visual assets (Gerrig and Zimbardo, 2010) – for example its colour or shape - as well as a related level of abstraction (Tversky, 2005). The proposed session is dedicated to embrace contributions presenting knowledge related phenomena and effects of visual media, e.g., out of the perspectives of media psychology, sociology, arts, or communication studies.

The use of visual media
A closely related aspect is the scope of usage of visual media to communicate and reflect knowledge in various settings. Visual media are the most important instruments to build a common ground of communication and to stimulate knowledge building (c.f. Münster et al., 2014) – either about products in context of advertisement or to convey ideas in professional workflows by using blueprints, maps, or charts (Bresciani, 2010). Related questions concern workflows and settings in which visual media are embedded as well as functions they fulfill. How do architectural plans support a communication of building information? To what extent are charts in customer relation management used? And what are functions as well as challenges related to visual media in the context of digital workflows, as for example in Industry 4.0 settings? Moreover, visual media fertilises reasoning and idea forming (Cross et al., 1996). Most design processes take place by a “communication” of designers with virtual and physical sketches. In these contexts visualisation techniques are important to gather an immediate visual feedback to sharpen and approve design visions. Related question are, e.g., how design processes rely on visual media and how to support design thinking by digital technologies. A third setting is the support of education and understanding of complex information settings by using visual media. With regards to these aspects, they are widely used to ease understanding of complex learning scenarios, to foster research processes (Gooding, 2004), or to reduce the complexity of large-scale data by using data visualisation (Spence, 2001). Expected contributions should highlight a usage as well as functions of visual media in certain scenarios and related technical, design, organisational or human-centred issues.

The design of visual media
Moreover, it is interesting how visual media should be designed to fulfill the intended function. This relies highly on the type of visual media - physical objects, paper-based depictions, as well as various digital media. Additionally, there are certain limitations and benefits of different types of visual media –images for example can be easily remembered (Nelson, 1979) and are well-suited to convey information about spatial settings and shapes, but, in contrast to texts, have difficulty in conveying blurry information – e.g. various probabilities of reconstruction hypotheses on historical buildings. Another question concerns visual freedom degrees – e.g. qualities of visualisation: realistic or abstracting impressions as well as schematic appearance – and their role for knowledge communication and reasoning in certain scenarios (Bertin and Jensch, 1974). Furthermore, an important question is how visual media are embedded in multi-sensory settings and accompanied by interaction – by gestures, pencils, or digital devices – or combined with auditory or olfactory impressions (c.f. Ch’ng, 2009). The proposed scope of this topic includes implications for usability and user-centred design of visual media as well as innovative approaches to enhance user experience and learning effect related to visual media.

SUBMISSION PROCEDURE:
For the submission of the structured abstract (download: template of structured abstract), please use the electronic upload procedure of our website. All submissions will undergo a double blind peer review. We kindly invite you to follow the authors' guidelines published on our website for structuring your abstract.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES:
25 January 2016 - Abstracts Submission Deadline
28 February 2016 - Acceptance notification to authors
25 March 2016 - Early-bird registration cut off
20 April 2015 - Full paper submission deadline
20 May 2016 - Registration deadline
15-17 June 2016 - Conference sessions