Task-Centric InfoVis

Team Members: Bob Amar, James Eagan, John Stasko

    "Low-Level Components of Analytic Activity in Information Visualization" InfoVis 2005
    "Knowledge Precepts for Design and Evaluation of Information Visualizations" TVCG 2005
    "A Knowledge Task-Based Framework for Design and Evaluation of Information Visualizations" Infovis 2004 (Best Paper)

While information visualization is quickly gaining prominence as a tool of choice in scientific and business analysis, successful decision-making and analysis with these tools tend to be more a matter of serendipity and user knowledge rather than of intentional design and specific analytic support. To supplement lower-level taxonomies of visual tasks, such as "identify", "associate", and "correlate", we have posited a set of higher-level knowledge precepts that help bridge the analytic gaps between data representation and higher-level analytic tasks, such as forecasting, learning new domains, and cost-benefit analysis.

We are also currently thinking about the correspondence of lower-level visual tasks to actual analyst questions and user interactions within visualization tools. We believe that a more specific focus on analytic activity within these lower-level tasks can lead to better task conformance, better evaluation methods, and a better understanding of the components of higher-level analytic activity.