Data-Visual Relationships to Subject Performance and Eye Movements

Abstract

Executive summaryVisual communication is ubiquitous, commanding our attention and commandeering our inattention. The presentation of information can take myriad visual forms, such as bar charts, scatter plots, network diagrams, and tables. These information graphics are attempts to map potentially large amounts of complex data to easily navigable visual form for rapid and accurate knowledge transfer. However, there is not yet a satisfactory formal methodology for selecting the most appropriate visualization method for a given set of data.A data taxonomy and novel visual taxonomy will be used to select visual stimuli from a database of acquired and newly generated information graphics. Oculomotor responses (eye tracking data) and task-based responses (mouse clicks or keyboard input) are recorded; performance on the latter is used to establish an expert subgroup. These results will be used to satisfy the three primary objectives of the proposed research, determining:how the choice of data visualization impacts oculomotor behavior and task performance, 2.if this behavior is discriminable between experts and novices, and 3.an empirically-based taxonomy of visualization based on the results of 1 and 2. Intellectual merit of the proposed activityThe proposed research will create a novel taxonomy for and database of acquired and generated information graphics as well as an associated web application to search, ‡