Visualizing science and technology across cultures

Abstract

Science and technology (S&T) visuals seem remarkably alike across cultures globally. Yet, individual and cultural experiences of scientists and engineers vary before they master the tools and techniques of their disciplines, and different parts of the world have different understandings of S&T. This disparity led us to conduct a pilot study with five S&T students at New Mexico Tech. We concluded that S&T visuals vary across cultures, the variations between designs comprise a spectrum of visual-textual and textual-visual correlations, and the similarities and differences between the visuals are caused by diverse individual and contextual factors.