SGER: Measuring the Influence of Spatial Ability in Data Visualization Comprehension

SGER：测量空间能力对数据可视化理解的影响

• 批准号: 0503680
• 负责人: Deborah Silver
• 金额: $ 5万
• 依托单位: Rutgers University New Brunswick
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-12-01 至 2005-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0503680&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SGER; Measuring; Influence; Spatial; Ability

Three-dimensional visualizations that make extensive use of state-of-the-art computer graphic techniques and a variety of representations of data in space are prevalent in diverse fields such as medicine, product design, manufacturing, weather predictions, simulations, and engineering. However, little is known about the cognitive processes involved in the comprehension of these visualizations. Now that 3D visualizations are also being used to aid in Web exploration, document search, and education, it is essential to target a wider range of users with very different cognitive skills. In this exploratory project, the PI will study spatial ability and its relationship to comprehension of current scientific and information visualizations, under the assumption that we can improve human performance by finding out what visualization features are best understood by a wide range of users and how these relate to different user spatial abilities, and then setting up explicit training programs to improve these spatial abilities. In particular, women tend to score lower in most spatial ability tests than men. The PI will run a series of experiments in an effort to better understand this phenomenon, and to determine how it may affect women's comprehension of various visualizations. The PI expects to improve on prior work in the field, where studies often were insufficiently controlled for multiple competing factors that may affect the tasks and lacked standardized tests of spatial abilities.Broader Impacts: This research will offer a new perspective in the understanding of 3D visualization, and will provide useful information for designers about what kinds of tools demand more developed spatial skills from users. The results will indicate ways to design system interfaces whose data representation are independent of users' spatial abilities, and to improve existing visualization tools in current systems where the spatial abilities requirements are high, thereby promoting participation by groups with lower spatial skills, and reducing the learning curve for new users.

三维可视化广泛使用最先进的计算机图形技术和空间数据的各种表示，在医学、产品设计、制造、天气预测、模拟和工程等不同领域都很流行。 然而，很少有人知道的认知过程中涉及的理解这些可视化。 现在，3D可视化也被用于帮助Web探索，文档搜索和教育，因此有必要针对具有非常不同认知技能的更广泛的用户。 在这个探索性项目中，PI将研究空间能力及其与当前科学和信息可视化理解的关系，假设我们可以通过找出广泛用户最了解的可视化功能以及这些功能与不同用户空间能力的关系来提高人类表现，然后建立明确的训练计划来提高这些空间能力。 特别是，女性在大多数空间能力测试中的得分往往低于男性。 PI将进行一系列实验，以更好地理解这种现象，并确定它如何影响女性对各种可视化的理解。 PI期望改进该领域以前的工作，其中研究往往没有充分控制可能影响任务的多个竞争因素，并且缺乏空间能力的标准化测试。更广泛的影响：这项研究将提供一个新的视角来理解3D可视化，并将为设计师提供有用的信息，了解什么样的工具需要用户更先进的空间技能。 研究结果将表明如何设计系统界面的数据表示是独立的用户的空间能力，并改善现有的可视化工具，在当前的系统中的空间能力的要求很高，从而促进参与的空间技能较低的群体，并减少新用户的学习曲线。