What is Interaction for Data Visualization?

Abstract

Interaction is fundamental to data visualization, but what "interaction" means in the context of visualization is ambiguous and confusing. We argue that this confusion is due to a lack of consensual definition. To tackle this problem, we start by synthesizing an inclusive view of interaction in the visualization community-including insights from information visualization, visual analytics and scientific visualization, as well as the input of both senior and junior visualization researchers. Once this view takes shape, we look at how interaction is defined in the field of human-computer interaction (HCI). By extracting commonalities and differences between the views of interaction in visualization and in HCI, we synthesize a definition of interaction for visualization. Our definition is meant to be a thinking tool and inspire novel and bolder interaction design practices. We hope that by better understanding what interaction in visualization is and what it can be, we will enrich the quality of interaction in visualization systems and empower those who use them.

The Unmet Data Visualization Needs of Decision Makers Within Organizations

“…Both survey and interviews suggested that decision makers lack "decision making" tools designed to support the flow along all decision phases: INTELLIGENCE Fig. 3: Taxonomy of allowable user actions in a visualization system [71]. Increasing the cardinality of such actions increases the degree of flexibility of the system.…”

Visual Analysis of Dynamic Changes in Structured Data on the Basis of Colour Markers

“…where MaxAge is the maximum age of infected people. Visual representation of such a value by conventional methods (graphs, charts, tables) is quite problematic as the number of components is high (in the extreme case age can be a continuous value) [20,21]. Very often, to analyze and interpret such data, rounding the parameter and switching to certain ranges are used.…”

Does Interaction Improve Bayesian Reasoning with Visualization?

“…Although interaction is commonly used in data visualization, efforts to define interactivity are ongoing [10]. Additionally, there is no consensus on the best visualization for Bayesian reasoning [23,29,32].…”

“…Recent work by Dimara and Perin [10] defines interaction (in visualization) as "the interplay between a person and a data interface involving a data-related intent, at least one action from the person and an interface reaction that is perceived as such." Similarly, Yi et al [45] and Heer and Shneiderman [21] construct taxonomies of interactions for visualization.…”

“…Interaction is core to visualization design and is a vital mode of communication between the user and visual system. In the visualization community, the study of interaction ranges from defining interaction [10,21,45], to understanding the interplay between interaction and cognition [27,34], to leveraging user interactions to improve analytics [5,13]. However, investigations into the value of adding interaction to a static design are rare and results are varied.…”