Exploration Views: Understanding Dashboard Creation and Customization for Visualization Novices

Written by the author of the best-selling <b>HyperText & HyperMedia,</b> this book is an excellent guide to the methods of usability engineering. The book provides the tools needed to avoid usability surprises and improve product quality. Step-by-step information on which method to use at various stages during the development lifecycle are included, along with detailed information on how to run a usability test and the unique issues relating to international usability.<br><br>* Emphasizes cost-effective methods that developers can implement immediately<br>* Instructs readers about which methods to use when, throughout the development lifecycle, which ultimately helps in cost-benefit analysis. <br>* Shows readers how to avoid the four most frequently listed reasons for delay in software projects.<br>* Includes detailed information on how to run a usability test.<br>* Covers unique issues of international usability.<br>* Features an extensive bibliography allowing readers to find additional information.<br>* Written by an internationally renowned expert in the field and the author of the best-selling HyperText & HyperMedia.

We describe the design and deployment of Many Eyes, a public web site where users may upload data, create interactive visualizations, and carry on discussions. The goal of the site is to support collaboration around visualizations at a large scale by fostering a social style of data analysis in which visualizations not only serve as a discovery tool for individuals but also as a medium to spur discussion among users. To support this goal, the site includes novel mechanisms for end-user creation of visualizations and asynchronous collaboration around those visualizations. In addition to describing these technologies, we provide a preliminary report on the activity of our users.

It remains challenging for information visualization novices to rapidly construct visualizations during exploratory data analysis. We conducted an exploratory laboratory study in which information visualization novices explored fictitious sales data by communicating visualization specifications to a human mediator, who rapidly constructed the visualizations using commercial visualization software. We found that three activities were central to the iterative visualization construction process: data attribute selection, visual template selection, and visual mapping specification. The major barriers faced by the participants were translating questions into data attributes, designing visual mappings, and interpreting the visualizations. Partial specification was common, and the participants used simple heuristics and preferred visualizations they were already familiar with, such as bar, line and pie charts. We derived abstract models from our observations that describe barriers in the data exploration process and uncovered how information visualization novices think about visualization specifications. Our findings support the need for tools that suggest potential visualizations and support iterative refinement, that provide explanations and help with learning, and that are tightly integrated into tool support for the overall visual analytics process.