Data Visualization in High School Education: A Participatory and Cooperative Design Study in Denmark

Data visualization literacy is vital for preparing students for higher education in data-driven fields, yet instructions and teaching materials for high school remain limited. To address this gap, we applied participatory design (PD) and cooperative prototyping (CP) with high school teachers and data visualization experts as equal partners. Over a period of 16 months, we conducted an interview and four iterative workshops to identify teaching challenges and co-create solutions. This process produced three prototype sets, culminating in a 17-step teaching unit on the CoTinker platform for computational thinking. The unit uses a music dataset and a developed visualization tool to engage students in collaboratively creating data visualizations through hands-on learning while introducing visualization concepts, visual storytelling, and data ethics. Our work demonstrates how PD and CP can bridge research and practice, and contributes a replicable framework for integrating data visualization into high school by use of co-designed tools grounded in real-world classrooms.