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Simplifying Overviews of Temporal Event Sequences

Published: 07 May 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Beginning the analysis of new data is often difficult as modern datasets can be overwhelmingly large. With visual analytics in particular, displays of large datasets quickly become crowded and unclear. Through observing the practices of analysts working with the event sequence visualization tool EventFlow, we identified three techniques to reduce initial visual complexity by reducing the number of event categories resulting in a simplified overview. For novice users, we suggest an initial pair of event categories to display. For advanced users, we provide six ranking metrics and display all pairs in a ranked list. Finally, we present the Event Category Matrix (ECM), which simultaneously displays overviews of every event category pair. In this work, we report on the development of these techniques through two formative usability studies and the improvements made as a result. The goal of our work is to investigate strategies that help users overcome the challenges associated with initial visual complexity and to motivate the use of simplified overviews in temporal event sequence analysis.

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Cited By

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  • (2023)Who Do We Mean When We Talk About Visualization Novices?Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581524(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
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  • (2023)Interactive Transformations and Visual Assessment of Noisy Event Sequences: An Application in En-Route Air Traffic Control2023 IEEE 16th Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis)10.1109/PacificVis56936.2023.00017(92-101)Online publication date: Apr-2023
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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '16: Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2016
    3954 pages
    ISBN:9781450340823
    DOI:10.1145/2851581
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 07 May 2016

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    Author Tags

    1. information visualization
    2. temporal event sequences

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    May 7 - 12, 2016
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    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)Who Do We Mean When We Talk About Visualization Novices?Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3544548.3581524(1-16)Online publication date: 19-Apr-2023
    • (2023)A Comparative Evaluation of Visual Summarization Techniques for Event SequencesComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1482142:3(173-185)Online publication date: 27-Jun-2023
    • (2023)Interactive Transformations and Visual Assessment of Noisy Event Sequences: An Application in En-Route Air Traffic Control2023 IEEE 16th Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis)10.1109/PacificVis56936.2023.00017(92-101)Online publication date: Apr-2023
    • (2021)EHR STAR: The State‐Of‐the‐Art in Interactive EHR VisualizationComputer Graphics Forum10.1111/cgf.1442441:1(69-105)Online publication date: Dec-2021
    • (2019)EventActionACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems10.1145/33014029:4(1-31)Online publication date: 9-Aug-2019
    • (2019)Dynamic Network PlaidProceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3290605.3300360(1-14)Online publication date: 2-May-2019
    • (2018)Visual Interfaces for Recommendation SystemsACM Transactions on Intelligent Systems and Technology10.1145/320049010:1(1-23)Online publication date: 28-Nov-2018
    • (2017)Coping with Volume and Variety in Temporal Event SequencesIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2016.253996023:6(1636-1649)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2017
    • (2017)Dashboard visualizations: Supporting real-time throughput decision-makingJournal of Biomedical Informatics10.1016/j.jbi.2017.05.02471(211-221)Online publication date: Jul-2017

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