Providing visual analytics guidance through decision support

Abstract

Guidance in visual analytics aims to support users in accomplishing their analytical goals and generating insights. Different approaches for guidance are widely adopted in many tools and frameworks for various purposes – from helping to focus on relevant data subspaces to selecting suitable visualization techniques. With each of these different purposes come specific considerations on how to provide the needed guidance. In this paper, we propose a generic method for making these considerations by framing the guidance problem as a decision problem and applying decision making theory and models toward its solution. This method passes through three stages: (1) identifying decision points; (2) deriving and evaluating alternatives; (3) visualizing the resulting alternatives to support users in comparing them and making their choice. Our method is realized as a set of practical worksheets and illustrated by applying it to a use case of providing guidance among different clustering methods. Finally, we compare our method with existing guidance frameworks to relate and delineate the respective goals and contributions of each.

A Heuristic Approach for Dual Expert/End-User Evaluation of Guidance in Visual Analytics

“…Sperrle et al expand this categorization, focusing on learning and teaching processes [46]. Han and Schulz investigate a methodology for implementing guidance based on decision support theory [22].…”

“…Besides practical implementations, guidance has also been studied extensively from a theoretical point of view [8,14]. Recently, researchers made further steps to bridge this theory to practice, resulting in frameworks and guidelines for designing and implementing effective guidance [22,45]. One of the open issues with guidance is that while existing frameworks and approaches claim that the envisioned guidance should be effective for the user (e.g., [5]), it is still not very clear how to evaluate in practical terms the extent to which the guidance succeeded in helping the user.…”