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

三维可视化广泛使用了最先进的计算机图形技术和各种空间数据表示，在医学、产品设计、制造、天气预报、模拟和工程等各个领域都很流行。然而，人们对这些视觉化的理解所涉及的认知过程知之甚少。既然3D可视化也被用于帮助Web探索、文档搜索和教育，那么有必要针对具有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理解当前科学和信息可视化的关系，假设我们可以通过找出广泛的用户最能理解的可视化特征以及这些特征与不同用户空间能力的关系来提高人类的表现，然后制定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，以更好地理解这一现象，并确定它如何影响女性对各种视觉化的理解。PI希望在该领域的先前工作上有所改进，在该领域，研究往往没有充分控制可能影响任务的多个相互竞争的因素，并且缺乏对空间能力的标准化测试。更广泛的影响：这项研究将为理解3D可视化提供一个新的视角，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发达的空间技能。研究结果将为设计数据表示独立于用户空间能力的系统界面提供方法，并改进当前系统中对空间能力要求较高的现有可视化工具，从而促进空间技能较低的群体参与，并减少新用户的学习曲线。

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.