Field Guide: Explanatory Visualisation for Women’s Return-to-Play in Grassroots Football Rhiannon Owen *

Abstract

Women returning to grassroots football during motherhood navigate complex physical, emotional, and social challenges that are not well supported by existing sport technologies and visualisation approaches. Current systems are predominantly performance oriented and fail to capture lived experience, non-linear participation, and community context, limiting opportunities for reflection and understanding. This work presents a design study exploring how explanatory visualisation can support women’s return-to-play in grassroots football. Drawing on a novel qualitative and quantitative dataset of participation experiences, we employ the Empathy-Driven Visualisation Framework (EDVF) and Five Design Sheets (FDS) to guide the design of Field Guide, a prototype system combining narrative, temporal, and community perspectives. The resulting visualisation supports interpretation, sensemaking, and a sense of belonging, contributing towards more human-centred approaches for visualising socially embedded participation.