A taxonomy of tasks for guiding the evaluation of multidimensional visualizations

ABSTRACT

The design of multidimensional visualization techniques is based on the assumption that a graphical representation of a large dataset can give more insight to a user, by providing him/her a more intuitive support in the process of exploiting data. When developing a visualization technique, the analytic and exploratory tasks that a user might need or want to perform on the data should guide the choice of the visual and interaction metaphors implemented by the technique. Usability testing of visualization techniques also needs the definition of users' tasks. The identification and understanding of the nature of the users' tasks in the process of acquiring knowledge from visual representations of data is a recent branch in information visualization research. Some works have proposed taxonomies to organize tasks that a visualization technique should support. This paper proposes a taxonomy of visualization tasks, based on existing taxonomies as well as on the observation of users performing exploratory tasks in a multidimensional data set using two different visualization techniques, Parallel Coordinates and RadViz. Different scenarios involving low-level tasks were estimated for the completion of some high-level tasks, and they were compared to the scenarios observed during the users' experiments.

REFERENCES

• 1: Stuart K. Card , Jock D. Mackinlay , Ben Shneiderman, Information visualization, Readings in information visualization: using vision to think, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 1999
• 2: Chaomei Chen , Yue Yu, Empirical studies of information visualization: a meta-analysis, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.53 n.5, p.851-866, Nov. 2000 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.2000.0422]
• 3: Catherine Plaisant, The challenge of information visualization evaluation, Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces, May 25-28, 2004, Gallipoli, Italy [doi>10.1145/989863.989880]
• 4: Inselberg, A., The Plane with Parallel Coordinates, Special Issue on Computational Geometry, The Visual Computer, 1, (1995), 69--91.
• 5: Patrick Hoffman , Georges Grinstein , Kenneth Marx , Ivo Grosse , Eugene Stanley, DNA visual and analytic data mining, Proceedings of the 8th conference on Visualization '97, p.437-ff., October 18-24, 1997, Phoenix, Arizona, United States
• 6: Stephen Wehrend , Clayton Lewis, A problem-oriented classification of visualization techniques, Proceedings of the 1st conference on Visualization '90, October 23-26, 1990, San Francisco, California
• 7: Rebecca R. Springmeyer , Meera M. Blattner , Nelson L. Max, A characterization of the scientific data analysis process, Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Visualization '92, October 19-23, 1992, Boston, Massachusetts
• 8: Ben Shneiderman, The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations, Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, p.336, September 03-06, 1996
• 9: Michelle X. Zhou , Steven K. Feiner, Visual task characterization for automated visual discourse synthesis, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.392-399, April 18-23, 1998, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/274644.274698]
• 10: E. Morse , M. Lewis , K. A. Olsen, Evaluating visualizations: using a taxonomic guide, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, v.53 n.5, p.637-662, Nov. 2000 [doi>10.1006/ijhc.2000.0412]
• 11: Stephen M. Casner, Task-analytic approach to the automated design of graphic presentations, ACM Transactions on Graphics (TOG), v.10 n.2, p.111-151, April 1991 [doi>10.1145/108360.108361]
• 12: Ignatius, E., Senay, H. and Favre J., An intelligent system for task-specific visualization assistance, Journal of Visual Language and Computing, 5, (1994), 321--338.
• 13: Michael D. Byrne , Bonnie E. John , Neil S. Wehrle , David C. Crow, The tangled Web we wove: a taskonomy of WWW use, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: the CHI is the limit, p.544-551, May 15-20, 1999, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States [doi>10.1145/302979.303154]
• 14: Robert Amar , John Stasko, BEST PAPER: A Knowledge Task-Based Framework for Design and Evaluation of Information Visualizations, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (INFOVIS'04), p.143-150, October 10-12, 2004 [doi>10.1109/INFOVIS.2004.10]
• 15: Robert Amar , James Eagan , John Stasko, Low-Level Components of Analytic Activity in Information Visualization, Proceedings of the Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization, p.15, October 23-25, 2005 [doi>10.1109/INFOVIS.2005.24]
• 16: Norman, D., Cognitive Engineering, User Centred System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, (1986), 31--61.
• 17: Jennifer Preece , Jenny Preece , Yvonne Rogers , Helen Sharp, Beyond Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 2001
• 18: Marco A. Winckler , Philippe Palanque , Carla M. D. S. Freitas, Tasks and scenario-based evaluation of information visualization techniques, Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference on Task models and diagrams, November 15-16, 2004, Prague, Czech Republic [doi>10.1145/1045446.1045475]
• 19: Raquel M. Pillat , Carla M. D. S. Freitas, Coordinating views in the InfoVis toolkit, Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces, May 23-26, 2006, Venezia, Italy [doi>10.1145/1133265.1133368]
• 20: Jean-Daniel Fekete, The InfoVis Toolkit, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (INFOVIS'04), p.167-174, October 10-12, 2004 [doi>10.1109/INFOVIS.2004.64]
• 21: Alfred Kobsa, An Empirical Comparison of Three Commercial Information Visualization Systems, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization 2001 (INFOVIS'01), p.123, October 22-23, 2001
• 22: Georges G. Grinstein , Patrick E. Hoffman , Ronald M. Pickett, Benchmark development for the evaluation of visualization for data mining, Information visualization in data mining and knowledge discovery, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2001

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Graphical user interfaces (GUI)

General Terms:
Algorithms, Design, Experimentation

Keywords:
information visualization, usability evaluation