A Typology of Guidance Tasks in Mixed‐Initiative Visual Analytics Environments

Abstract

Guidance has been proposed as a conceptual framework to understand how mixed‐initiative visual analytics approaches can actively support users as they solve analytical tasks. While user tasks received a fair share of attention, it is still not completely clear how they could be supported with guidance and how such support could influence the progress of the task itself. Our observation is that there is a research gap in understanding the effect of guidance on the analytical discourse, in particular, for the knowledge generation in mixed‐initiative approaches. As a consequence, guidance in a visual analytics environment is usually indistinguishable from common visualization features, making user responses challenging to predict and measure. To address these issues, we take a system perspective to propose the notion of guidance tasks and we present it as a typology closely aligned to established user task typologies. We derived the proposed typology directly from a model of guidance in the knowledge generation process and illustrate its implications for guidance design. By discussing three case studies, we show how our typology can be applied to analyze existing guidance systems. We argue that without a clear consideration of the system perspective, the analysis of tasks in mixed‐initiative approaches is incomplete. Finally, by analyzing matchings of user and guidance tasks, we describe how guidance tasks could either help the user conclude the analysis or change its course.

Providing visual analytics guidance through decision support

“…In particular the aspect of task abstraction is then revisited in more detail by Pérez-Messina et al’s typology. 98…”

“…Pe ´rez-Messina et al's paper proposes a typology of guidance tasks that connects the concept of guidance -its degrees (orienting, directing, prescribing) and the knowledge gap it addresses (target unknown, path unknown) -with user tasks (mainly search tasks). 98 This typology is not a design framework in itself, but it supports guidance design with a nuanced abstraction of guidance tasks. Sperrle et al's paper describes a syntax to specify guidance functionality on the implementation level.…”

“…The task typology by Pe ´rez-Messina et al makes prominent use of this distinction in their framework as well. 98 Interestingly, neither Collins et al nor Pe ´rez-Messina et al connote disrupting or synchronous guidance necessarily as improper or inadvisable, but instead highlight the importance of making an informed and explicit choice about it. After all, guidance should never be followed blindly and it is thus important that guidance is provided explicitly and noticeably.…”

“…In particular the aspect of task abstraction is then revisited in more detail by Pe ´rez-Messina et al's typology. 98 Designing guidance. While the conceptual papers describe the tools for providing guidance (e.g.…”

VALS: Supporting Visual Data Analysis in Longitudinal Clinical Studies

“…Several studies have looked at how automated or mixedinitiative methods can give valuable data insights [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]. The concept of visualization recommendation is to lessen the cognitive strain on the user by using recommendation algorithms to propose relevant views.…”