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A Heuristic Approach to Value-Driven Evaluation of Visualizations

Journal Article · · IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
 [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [1];  [1]
  1. Georgia Inst. of Technology, Atlanta, GA (United States)
  2. Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Recently, an approach for determining the value of a visualization was proposed, one moving beyond simple measurements of task accuracy and speed. The value equation contains components for the time savings a visualization provides, the insights and insightful questions it spurs, the overall essence of the data it conveys, and the confidence about the data and its domain it inspires. This articulation of value is purely descriptive, however, providing no actionable method of assessing a visualization's value. In this work, we create a heuristic-based evaluation methodology to accompany the value equation for assessing interactive visualizations. We refer to the methodology colloquially as ICE-T, based on an anagram of the four value components. Our approach breaks the four components down into guidelines, each of which is made up of a small set of low-level heuristics. Evaluators who have knowledge of visualization design principles then assess the visualization with respect to the heuristics. We conducted an initial trial of the methodology on three interactive visualizations of the same data set, each evaluated by 15 visualization experts. As a result, we found that the methodology showed promise, obtaining consistent ratings across the three visualizations and mirroring judgments of the utility of the visualizations by instructors of the course in which they were developed.

Research Organization:
Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC04-94AL85000
OSTI ID:
1485468
Report Number(s):
SAND--2018-11898J; 668715
Journal Information:
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Journal Name: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics Journal Issue: 1 Vol. 25; ISSN 1077-2626
Publisher:
IEEECopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

Cited By (2)

Evaluating interactive data systems: Survey and case studies journal November 2019
Evaluating Interactive Data Systems: Workloads, Metrics, and Guidelines
  • Jiang, Lilong; Rahman, Protiva; Nandi, Arnab
  • SIGMOD/PODS '18: International Conference on Management of Data, Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Management of Data https://doi.org/10.1145/3183713.3197386
conference May 2018

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