Collaborative Research: HCC: Medium: Design guidelines for dynamic visualizations

人们依靠可视化来理解和交流数据中的模式、图表中的过程或地图中的路线，这些领域包括新闻、教育、商业和安全。这些可视化越来越动态，使用移动的对象或动画模式来显示数据中的趋势和交互。在许多情况下，这些动态显示可以帮助人们理解这些关系，但在某些情况下，这些动态元素可能会使人们不知所措或导致他们得出错误的结论。在所有这些领域，即使是专业的设计师也很难预测哪种显示器会起作用。通过以心理学为基础的实验和对可视化专家设计师的采访，本项目将探索动态可视化的力量和局限性。它将产生一套指导方针，使来自不同背景和经验水平的设计师能够创造更有效的展示，从而更好地理解，教育和决策。为了了解人们如何处理和解释这些动态显示，研究人员将通过采访数据显示的设计师并验证他们的设计如何满足他们的既定目标，对跨数据显示的动画的抽象用途（例如，跟踪图表中轴变化的值）进行编目。与这些设计师合作，研究团队将对人类视觉系统处理预期模式的能力和局限性进行一系列实证测试，其中一组初始实验将测试动态可视化的能力，以支持观众查看统计数据、进行比较、跟踪对象和吸引注意力。研究人员将利用这些发现，为共同的目标设计有效的展示，从而形成一个从业者指南。在与我们的设计师和顾问团队的持续磋商中，调查人员将纳入他们的反馈(a)我们的抽象显示、任务和措施是否与他们的情境案例研究相关，以及(b)我们的从业者指南是否与他们的期望一致，并捕获了应该在大多数案例研究情境中一般化的规则。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

People rely on visualizations to understand and communicate patterns in data, processes in diagrams, or routes within maps, in domains including journalism, education, business, and security. These visualizations are increasingly dynamic, using moving objects or animated patterns to show trends and interactions in the data. In many cases these dynamic displays can help people understand these relationships, but in some cases these dynamic elements can overwhelm people or lead them to incorrect conclusions. Across all of these domains, even expert designers have trouble predicting which displays will work. Through psychology-based experiments and interviews with expert visualization designers, this project will explore the power and limits of dynamic visualization. It will result in a set of guidelines that will enable designers from diverse backgrounds and levels of experience to create more effective displays that lead to better understanding, education, and decisions.To understand how people process and interpret these dynamic displays, the investigators will catalog an abstracted set of intended uses for animation across data displays (e.g., track a value across an axis change in a graph) by interviewing designers of data displays and validating how well their designs meet their stated goals. In collaboration with these designers, the research team will conduct a series of empirical tests of the power and limits of the human visual system to process the intended patterns, with an initial set of experiments that will test the ability of dynamic visualizations to support viewers in seeing statistics, making comparisons, tracking objects, and drawing attention. The investigators will use these findings to generate a practitioner’s guide for designing effective displays for common goals. In ongoing consultations with our team of designers and advisors, the investigators will incorporate their feedback about (a) whether our abstracted displays, tasks, and measures remain relevant to their in-context case studies, and (b) whether our practitioner’s guide is consistent with their expectations and captures rules that should generalize across most case-study contexts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.