Towards facilitating user skill acquisition

Abstract

A key challenge for information visualization designers lies in developing systems that best support users in terms of their individual abilities, needs, and preferences. However, most visualizations require users to first gather a certain set of skills before they can efficiently process the displayed information. This paper presents a first step towards designing visualizations that provide personalized support in order to ease the so-called 'learning curve' during a user's skill acquisition phase. We present prediction models, trained on users' gaze data, that can identify if users are still in the skill acquisition phase or if they have gained the necessary abilities. The paper first reveals that users exhibit the learning curve even during the usage of simple information visualizations, and then shows that we can generate reasonably accurate predictions about a user's skill acquisition using solely their eye gaze behavior.

Perceptual Pat: A Virtual Human Visual System for Iterative Visualization Design

“…With the introduction of high-performance eye tracking devices, researchers use eye movement data [11] to understand human perception. This provides us with new knowledge about what causes confusion in charts [44], visual patterns that benefit recall [8], visual saliency as a measure of attention [63], and assessment methods for visualization proficiency [75]. It is even possible to infer one's personality with eye movement patterns during chart reading [74].…”

The role of user differences in customization

“…We also extend previous work by broadening findings on the value of personalization of content displayed by means of information visualizations. In particular, InfoVis-based content personalization has been formally studied in terms of system-driven adaptation [1,9,30,46,55], but not with customization. Here we provide insights on how effective personalization of InfoVis-based contents could be provided by combining customization and adaptation.…”