Abstract
The long-term goal of our research is to design information visualization systems that adapt to the specific needs, characteristics, and context of each individual viewer. In order to successfully perform such adaptation, it is crucial to first identify characteristics that influence an individual user’s effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction with a particular information visualization type. In this paper, we present a study that focuses on investigating the impact of four user characteristics (perceptual speed, verbal working memory, visual working memory, and user expertise) on the effectiveness of two common data visualization techniques: bar graphs and radar graphs. Our results show that certain user characteristics do in fact have a significant effect on task efficiency, user preference, and ease of use. We conclude with a discussion of how our findings could be effectively used for an adaptive visualization system.
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Toker, D., Conati, C., Carenini, G., Haraty, M. (2012). Towards Adaptive Information Visualization: On the Influence of User Characteristics. In: Masthoff, J., Mobasher, B., Desmarais, M.C., Nkambou, R. (eds) User Modeling, Adaptation, and Personalization. UMAP 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7379. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31454-4_23
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31454-4_23
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