Exploring the Evolution of Sensemaking Strategies in Immersive Space to Think

Abstract

Existing research on immersive analytics to support the sensemaking process focuses on single-session sensemaking tasks. However, in the wild, sensemaking can take days or months to complete. In order to understand the full benefits of immersive analytic systems, we need to understand how immersive analytic systems provide flexibility for the dynamic nature of the sensemaking process. In our work, we build upon an existing immersive analytic system -Immersive Space to Think, to evaluate how immersive analytic systems can support longitudinal sensemaking tasks. We conducted a user study with eight participants with three separate analysis sessions each. We found significant differences between analysis strategies between sessions one, two, and three, which suggest that immersive space to think can benefit analysts during multiple stages in the sensemaking process.

Struggles and Strategies in Understanding Information Visualizations

“…For instance, Mayr et al [45] explored different strategies to solve tasks when exploring information visualizations. Similarly, various individual and group strategies within information analysis processes have also been explored [2,20,31,33,41]. These studies focused on the exploration stage, when participants already knew how to read and interact with the visualizations; participants were given instructions or training materials about what was available in the visualizations.…”

“…We conducted a qualitative empirical study to expand this understanding. We observed how 14 participants worked towards making sense of a diverse set of 20 InfoVis examples on their own with no additional training, support and given no specific tasks. Through a fine-grained analysis of our extensive data, we observed the details of people's challenges, struggles and strategies with interpreting different aspects of the visualization.…”

Uncovering Best Practices in Immersive Space to Think

“…Another approach to IA systems is providing users with "space to think" [1] during analytic tasks through large tracked areas for offloading cognition into the environment around them. There has been much work in this area spanning exploration of how participants use these types of spaces [25,26], understanding the high-and low-level organization of these spaces [13,29,30,38], cognitive load within these systems [17], and techniques for assisting users with organizing content [42]. While this research area is growing, there has been limited work on understanding how these systems may be used long-term or by professionals.…”

“…Additionally, Davidson et al explored multi-session sensemaking in a system called Immersive Space to Think [13]. In this study, novice users were tasked to complete a single sensemaking task over the course of three separate sessions.…”

“…The immersive analytics prototype used in this work builds upon the existing Immersive Space to Think (IST) approach [4,13,25,26]. The IST approach uses a VR-based system, which provides a largetracked area for completing a text-based sensemaking task.…”