Interactive applications and rhetorical devices for guiding parent-clinician communication through data visualizations

Effective communication between clinicians and parents of young children can decrease parents' anxiety and discomfort, help them handle bad news and uncertainty, and improve their adherence to proposed interventions. Parent-clinician communication further has the potential to facilitate collaboration and increase parents' empowerment. However when communication involves a discussion of the child's developmental delay or challenging behaviors, parents experience an emotional strain as they discuss hopes and fears, developmental concerns, and feelings of distress. As a consequence, communication challenges may emerge such as denial and the parent's resistance against the information that the clinician presents. In addition to the emotional strain, parents also experience a cognitive burden due to medical jargon or presentation of data that is inaccessible to them. In fact, in most health care settings, parents reported their expectation of more accessible information than is currently provided. In order to address these challenges, I present data visualization as a method of facilitating parent-clinician communication. This dissertation covers the cognitive perception and the practical application of data visualization in parent-clinician communication through: (1) rhetorical devices that are used to guide people's understanding of data visualizations, and (2) interactive applications I have built that explore the role of data visualizations in clinical communication. Through exploring cognitive and practical aspects of visualizations in communication, this dissertation makes three contributions. First, I showcase three interactive webtools that involve visualizations, and demonstrate that visualizations can facilitate family-clinician communication through overcoming 1) the emotional barriers by presenting children's behaviors to parents in an objective manner and 2) the cognitive barriers by acting as an anchor for conversation and presenting important developmental concepts or patterns that are hard to convey through words or text. Next, I identify features that make behavioral visualizations useful for various communication based tasks, such as displaying microbehaviors and providing a balanced representation of child-adult interaction, instead of solely focusing on the child behavior. Finally, I present visual and textual cues as rhetorical devices for shaping the message in the visualization and guiding the viewers through visualizations. These devices help reduce confusion and prevent miscommunication in visual-based communication as thus contribute to a more effective parent-clinician communication.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Computer Science

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2019

Author dc:creator

• Kong, Ha Kyung

Contributors dc:contributor

• Karahalios, Karrie
• Bailey, Brian
• Sundaram, Hari
• Meadan, Hedda
• Liu, Zhicheng

• visualization
• healthcare

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2019 Ha Kyung Kong

Language dc:language

en

Handle dc:identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105927

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/105927