Comparing Color and Leader Line Highlighting Strategies in Coordinated View Geovisualizations

Abstract

In most coordinated view geovisualization tools, a transient visual effect is used to highlight observations across views when brushed with a mouse or other input device. Most current geovisualization and information visualization systems use colored outlines or fills to highlight observations, but there remain a wide range of alternative visual strategies that can also be implemented and compared to color highlighting to evaluate user performance. This paper describes the results of an experiment designed to compare user performance with two highlighting methods; color and leader lines. Our study methodology uses eye-tracking to capture participant eye fixations while they answer questions that require attention to highlighted observations in multiple views. Our results show that participants extract information as efficiently from coordinated view displays that use leader line highlighting to link information as they do from those that use a specific color to highlight items. We also found no significant differences when changing the color of the highlighting effect from red to black. We conclude that leader lines show significant potential for use as an alternative highlighting method in coordinated multiple view visualizations, allowing color to be reserved for representing thematic attributes of data.

User studies in cartography: opportunities for empirical research on interactive maps and visualizations

“…Most of the market-available mobile devices rely on touch functionality, and increasingly include support for voice and gesture input (Muehlenhaus, 2013). However, restriction to multimodal and touch input is a challenge in the context of exploratory visualization, where highlighting and coordinating using brushing is fundamental to successful interaction (Griffin & Robinson, 2015;Robinson, 2011). Furthermore, we need to consider how our interactive map and visualization designs should respond across mobile and non-mobile devices (Marcotte, 2010;Roth, 2015), requiring us to seamlessly design for every possible technology much like multiresolution databases and multiscale mapping now allow us to seamlessly design for every possible place and scale (Brewer & Buttenfield, 2007;Robertson, Ebert, Eick, Keim, & Joy, 2009).…”

Breaking the Eyes: How Do Users Get Started with a Coordinated and Multiple View Geovisualization Tool?

“…There is a wide range of available solutions that can be applied into the layout, highlighting being just one example (Robinson, 2011). Nevertheless, not all solutions are similarly effective and not all have been sufficiently exploited (Griffin and Robinson, 2015). It is therefore important to understand which features of CMV tools attract the attention of individuals who are learning the tools on their own, and which features the individuals refer to when seeking to understand a CMV's complex layout (as targeted in RQ3).…”

Internal and External Visual Cue Preferences for Visualizations in Presentations

“…In this section, we define visual cues and review prior work on visual cues from different domains spanning from education, to psychology, to narrative visualization. Prior work in this domain has investigated visual cues by forming taxonomies [dKTRP09, LH10] studying the effectiveness of a single cue [THM*08], or comparing the effects of multiple cue types [GR10]. The prevalence of the presentation of results in various settings (e.g., academic conferences and business meetings) led us to focus on visual cues for presentation.…”

“…However, Moreno's study found that “improper use of cueing might be ineffective and even increase cognitive load on the learner” [dKTRP09, Mor07]. Works in other fields compared multiple visual cues [CCH*14, GR10] or studied combinations of visual cues [PO13, WPM16]. Pyysalo and Oksanen studied the effectiveness of cue combinations by comparing three highlighting conditions: size, size and shape, and size and color [PO13].…”