1. Interaction in Infovis An Overview Prepared by Soha Makady 1

2. Toward a Deeper Understanding of the Role of Interaction in Information Visualization Ji Soo Yi et al. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, November/December 2007 2

3. Why is interaction Important? Without interaction, an infovis technique becomes a static image As the data set grows, static images become hard to read 3

4. Objective? Survey current interaction techniques Connect user objectives with the interaction techniques that accomplish them If the user wants to achieve some goal, he would know which interaction technique to use 4

5. Identified Categories An interaction can help the user … Select Explore Reconfigure Encode Abstract/Elaborate Filter Connect 5

6. 1. Select To: Mark something as interesting Helps with –Too many data items –Representation changes 6

7. 1. Select - Example 7 Placemarks for UofC

8. 2. Explore To: Show me something else Examples –Panning: Moves the camera across a scene Demo: Google maps –Address: 2500 University Dr NW University of Calgary –Direct Walk: Moves from one position to another by interaction Demo: //www.visualthesaurus.com/ –Get –Take 8

9. 3. Reconfigure To: Show me a different arrangement Examples: –Baseline adjustment 9

10. 3. Reconfigure Examples: –Spatial Shift operation* 10 Hidden bars * http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sage/sdmwalk1.html

11. 3. Reconfigure Jitter: Displacing overlapping records 11 Points represent 150 values

12. 4. Encode To: Show me a different arrangement Can be done through color, orientation, size encoding (and other techniques) Example*: Color encoding 12 * http://www.macrofocus.com/public/products/infoscope/tutorial/parallel/ Different attributes Attributes for a certain object

13. 4. Encode Example: Size Encoding 13 Sales of coffee

14. 5. Abstract/Elaborate To: Show me more/less detail Example: Details on demand technique 14 * Focus+context display and navigation techniques for enhancing radial, space-filling hierarchy visualizations. Stasko, J.; Zhang, E.. InfoVis 2000

15. 6. Filter To: Show me something conditionally Example*: Items not matching a condition are hidden 15 * M. Wattenberg and J. Kriss, "Designing for Social Data Analysis"IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 2006 Years Number of names

16. 6. Filter Example*: Items not matching a condition are shown differently 16 * R. Spence and L. Tweedie, "The Attribute Explorer: information synthesis via exploration," Interacting with Computers 1998.

17. 7. Connect To: Show me related items Examples: –Visual Thesaurus (previously categorized as Explore) –Brushing* 17

18. Discussion - 1 Do we have rigid categories for interactions? Are undo/redo interaction techniques (to explore), Or usability requirements? 18

19. A framework of Interaction Costs in Information Visualization Heidi Lam IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, November/December 2008 19

20. Background The Gulf of Execution –Describes the gap between a user's goal for action and the means to execute that goal The Gulf of Evaluation –Describes the degree to which the system/artifact provide representations that can be directly perceived and interpreted by the user 20

21. Execution – Evaluation Cycle* 21 User Goals Physical System Gulf of Execution Gulf of Evaluation

22. Norman’s Seven Stages of Action Goals What we want to happen Evaluation of the interpretations with what we expected to happen Interpreting the perception according to our expectations Perceiving the state of the world An intention to act so as to achieve the goal The actual sequence of actions that we plan to do The physical execution of that action sequence Physical System

23. Proposed Framework: Objectives? 23 1. Narrow the Gulf of Execution 2. Narrow the Gulf of Evaluation Highlight Design Considerations that would: 3. Add a goal?

24. Form Goal: Decision Costs Decision 1: Choosing a data subset 24 The study* reports: “[Users] had no idea where they should start to look for interesting features” * Abello et al. ASK-Graph View: A Large Scale Graph Visualization System. In IEEE InfoVis 2006. Low level view of a graph defined on health related terms with 86,000 nodes and 2,000,000 edges

25. (1)Form Goal: Decision Costs Decision 2: Choosing amongst interface options Study*: Evaluating SBizPort (a Spanish business web portal) versus YahooES –For SBizPort: “ … not having too much options is helpful to the user because it makes it easy to look for the information.” –For YahooES: Ten subjects said that YahooES had too many options to choose from and hence distracted them from finding relevant information. ‘‘it is very hard to search for specific information. It has lots of worthless menus’’ 25 * Chung. Studying Information Seeking on the Non-English Web: An Experiment on a Spanish Business Web Portal. IJHCS 2006

26. (2) Form System Operations: System Power Costs What system operations need to be done to achieve my goal? E.g. Spotfire* has many representations: –“It took users considerable time to decide on the right representation and to correctly set the coordinates and the parameters” –“When users selected the wrong visualization at the beginning, it was difficult for them to backtrack” 26 *Kobsa. An Empirical Comparison of Three Commercial Information Visualization Systems. In Proc IEEE InfoVis, 2001.

27. (3)Multiple Input Mode Costs Having several views within a tool may lead to errors Can be –Inconsistent Mode Use on Multiple Views –Imperceptible Mode Changes –Overloaded Controls 27

28. (3a)Inconsistent Mode Use on Multiple Views 28 Overview window Detail window * Hornbæk et al. Navigation Patterns and Usability of Zoomable User Interfaces with and without an Overview. ACM TOCHI 9(4):362–389, 2002. “Some subjects tried to zoom in and out while they had the mouse over the overview window”

29. (3b)Imperceptible Mode Changes Mode change may not be noticed by the user “when in focus-lock mode and accidentally crossing the center of the menu, participants expressed confusion when the focus area was dynamically recentered to the mouse position” 29 Focus region is locked Lock is released

30. (3c) Overloaded Controls In a study* on Zoomable User Interfaces: –“some subjects accidentally triggered a zoom operation when actually trying to slide” 30 *Buering et al. User Interaction With Scatterplots on Small Screens—A Comparative Evaluation of Geometric-Semantic Zoom and Fisheye Distortion. IEEE InfoVis, 2006.

31. (4) Physical Motion Costs Dissatisfaction can result from –Costs in mouse position –Costs in mouse drag –Costs in accumulated motions 31

32. Example: Mouse Position Costs DQ sliders: user filter unnecessary data by moving the slider Brushing histograms: Users highlight states of interest 32 DQ Sliders Brushing histogram In a study*: “The targets [in the brushing histograms] for clicking were narrower and smaller compared with DQ sliders” * Li and North. Empirical Comparison of Dynamic Query Sliders And Brushing Histograms. In Proc IEEE InfoVis, 2003.

33. (5) Visual Cluttering Costs Mouse hovering provides tool- tip guidance, but it can cause occlusion and distraction 33 Tool-tip may hide a node http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/research_teams.nsf/pages/iva.publications.html/$FILE/hybrid -infovis-poster.pdf

34. (6) View Change Costs As the user moves from one view to another, associate objects from the old view to the new view By brushing-and-linking 34

35. (7) State Change costs User needs to explore data in order to evaluate whether the visualization achieved his goals  Re-finding –“The overview pane supports jumping directly to targets; it helps returning to previously visited parts of the document” 35

36. How to Narrow … The Gulf of Execution –Less is more –Designers should aim for small set of simple and predictable interactions replace sequences of actions by a simple action to simplify interaction 36

37. How to Narrow … The Gulf of Evaluation –Give users more training on object association techniques (among different views) –Support refinding (i.e. allow the user to explore and save a visualization state) 37

38. Can We Narrow.. The Gulf of Goal Formation? –A visualization cannot tell the user what questions need to be answered, but … –Could have easy-to-use interactions that help the user explore the data 38

39. Discussion Is it a matter of usability or interaction? I think that … –Narrowing the gulf of execution is a usability aspect –Narrowing the gulf of evaluation is an infovis aspect 39

40. My Project What kind of interactions would I need? –Zooming –Filtering 40

41. Using Nested Treemaps m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 m7 ma mb mc mdme m1 m4 m5 m6 m7 m4 m5 m5m5 m5m5 ma mb mdme m1 m4 m5 m6 m7 m1 m2 m3 m1 m2 m3 mb mc ma mb md m1 m4 m5 m6 m7 mb mc mdme mdme Package 1 Package 2 Package 3 Package 4 Package 5 class1 class2 class3 class5 class6 class7 class8 class9 class10 class8 class7 class5 class14

42. Click on a method to find affected methods m1 m2 m3 m4 m5 m6 m7 ma mb mc mdme m1 m4 m5 m6 m7 m4 m5 m5m5 m5m5 ma mb mdme m1 m4 m5 m6 m7 m1 m2 m3 m1 m2 m3 mb mc ma mb md m1 m4 m5 m6 m7 mb mc mdme mdme Package 1 Package 3 Package 4 Package 5 class1 class2 class3 class5 class6 class7 class8 class9 class10 class8 class7 class5 class14 Legend Direct Level 2 to 4 Lower than 4 Package 2

43. Visual Thesaurus Demo 43 Click

44. 44 Visual Thesaurus Demo

45. To Do: –Maps.google.com –//www.visualthesaurus.com/ Get Take 45