XI. Interaction, View Manipulation

Interactive visualization

• Interaction requires careful design
• Human-Computer Interaction models and methods
  • Design for usability:
    • Consider human factors
    • Evaluate with users

Usability

Usability is a measure of how well a specific user in a specific context can use a product/design to achieve a defined goal effectively, efficiently and satisfactorily.

• Guidelines
  • The user should be aware of interactive options = Visibility of actions
  • Options should be visible and understandable
    • Not obvious for interactive visualization in plotly, for example
    • Easier for specialized tools
• HCI focus on design for usability
  • Important
    • It is user dependent
    • It is task and context dependent
  • Interactions should be design for specific goals and specific target users
  • It is also technology dependent…

Change over time

Change any of the other choices

• encoding itself
• parameters
• arrange: rearrange, reorder
• aggregation level, what is filtered...

Idiom: Re-encode

The user to manually change between several different idiom

Idiom: Change parameters

• Widgets and controls: sliders, buttons, radio buttons, checkboxes, dropdowns / comboboxes
• Pros: clear affordances, self-documenting (with labels)
• Cons: uses screen space
• Design choices
  • separated vs interleaved
  • controls vs canvas

→ This method emphasizes using control elements like sliders and buttons to allow users to dynamically adjust parameters, making the interaction intuitive and flexible, but it may use up screen space.

Idiom: Change order/arrangement