Visualization Onboarding: Learning How to Read and Use Visualizations

Abstract

The aim of visualization is to support humans in dealing with large and complex information structures, to make these structures more comprehensible, facilitate exploration, and enable knowledge dis- covery. However, users often have problems reading and interpreting data from visualizations, in particular when they experience them for the first time. A lack of visualization literacy, i.e., knowledge in terms of domain, data, visual encoding, interaction, and also analyti- cal methods can be observed. To support users in learning how to use new digital technologies, the concept of onboarding has been successfully applied in other domains. However, it has not received much attention from the visualization community so far. With our position paper, we aim to work towards filling this gap by proposing a design space of onboarding in the context of visualization.

Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online

“…There is a robust literature in computer science on data and visualization literacy, where the latter often refers to the ability of a person "to comprehend and interpret graphs" [65] as well as the ability to create visualizations from scratch [20]. Research in this area often includes devising methods to assess this form of literacy [4,15,66], to investigate how people (mis)understand visualizations [21,22,81], or to create systems that help a user improve their understanding of unfamiliar visualizations [1,3,20,87,95,96]. Evan Peck et al [82] have responded to this literature by showing how a "complex tapestry of motivations, preferences, and beliefs [impact] the way that participants [prioritize] data visualizations," suggesting that researchers need to better understand users' social and political context in order to design visualizations that speak powerfully to their personal experience.…”

A Design Space for Visualization Onboarding in Data-Driven Stories

“…Current definitions of onboarding and related terms all come from the visual analytic field [1,7]. We thus first propose a new definition for onboarding in the context of DDS, as In our context, onboarding covers "all the techniques applied by authors that support readers to understand the curated visualizations of narrative storytelling".…”

“…For DDS authors and designers, it's important to minimize the risk of misinterpreting visualizations by their readers. Visualization onboarding, embedding knowledge and guidance have been meant to provide adequate support for readers to understand visualizations as they progress through DDS [2,7]. Onboarding is a continuous mechanism which involves various DDS elements and interactions on each step.…”

Unit Visualizations for Visual Storytelling

“…A kind of visualization onboarding strategy should thus be thought of. In that context, storytelling has been identified as a promising onboarding method since it inherently embeds a building-up process allowing to progressively distill information [6]. We believe that this narrative essence combined to the easily separable nature of unit visualization foster the onboarding potential.…”