Evaluating How Level of Detail of Visual History Affects Process Memory

Abstract

Visual history tools provide visual representations of the workflow during data analysis tasks. While there is an established need for reviewing analytic processes, and many visual history tools provide visualizations to do so, it is not well known how helpful the tools actually are for process recall. Through a controlled experiment, we evaluated how the presence of a visual history aid and varying levels of visual detail affect process memory. Participants conducted an analysis task using a visual textdocument analysis tool. We evaluated their memories of the process both immediately after the analysis and then again one week later. Results showed that even visual history views with reduced data-resolution were effective for aiding process memory. Further, even without inclusion of any data in the visual history aids, the visual cues alone from the final workspace were enough to improve memory of the main themes of analyses.

Survey on the Analysis of User Interactions and Visualization Provenance

“…Expanding the discussion in this section more broadly than only the analysis of these scripts and grammars, we find studies detailing ways in which reviewing provenance data permits a user to both better explore past actions and to understand the effects of potential future actions within a system. For example, Ragan et al [RGT15] performed a controlled study to evaluate how the presence of a visual history aid affects the memory of a user with recalling the details of their exploration process, finding that providing such an aide for a user to explore their past interactions was a substantial benefit. A similar conclusion was reached by Chen et al [CQW * 14] in their propagation-based parametric model approach, also noting that analysts were better able to recall the chronological states of the analysis process with their symbolic model.…”

Dynamic Network Plaid

“…The analysis of such networks can often be time-consuming, requiring many different steps to reach an end-point; making it difficult for a user to accurately remember their interaction history. User studies have shown that providing a view to support provenance visualization can aid the process memory of the user [37,48,49]. Several systems have support for interaction histories [21,25,55] and report positive results related to insight discovery and exploration recall.…”

Visualisation of Long in Time Dynamic Networks on Large Touch Displays

“…Due to the diversity of this data, and the considerable number of possible analysis tasks [13,172], we will need to support some state retrieval of the visualisation at different, user-initiated, transformation points. Others have shown that providing a view to support provenance visualisation can aid the process memory of the user [140,244,245]. Several sys-tems have support for interaction histories [68,93,304] and report positive results related to insight discovery and exploration recall.…”

“…User studies have shown that providing a view to support provenance visualisation can aid the process memory of the user [140,244,245]. Several systems have support for interaction histories [68,93,304] and report positive results related to insight discovery and exploration recall.…”

“…The analysis tasks involved with large in time dynamic data generally result in complex interaction stacking and, without some form of provenance data, this can make it very challenging and time-consuming to reproduce, explain, or repeat a previous analysis. Very few dynamic graph visualisation systems provide information about interaction provenance, let alone maintain its presence on the screen as a constant feature, despite generally positive results reported for systems with integrated interaction provenance [68,93,140,244,245,304]. Within this feature, we also provide support for interaction cascades -the user can complete their analysis on one part of the graph and then duplicate all steps instantly by defining a new timeslice.…”