Abstract
Analysing users in their context of work and finding out how and why they use different information resources is essential to provide interactive visualisation systems that match their goals and needs. Designers should actively involve the intended users throughout the whole process. This chapter presents a user-centered approach for the design of interactive visualisation systems. We describe three phases of the iterative visualisation design process: the early envisioning phase, the global specification phase, and the detailed specification phase. The whole design cycle is repeated until some criterion of success is reached. We discuss different techniques for the analysis of users, their tasks and domain. Subsequently, the design of prototypes and evaluation methods in visualisation practice are presented. Finally, we discuss the practical challenges in design and evaluation of collaborative visualisation environments. Our own case studies and those of others are used throughout the whole chapter to illustrate various approaches.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
K. Allendörfer, S. Aluker, G. Panjwani, J. Proctor, D. Sturtz, M. Vukovic, and C. Chen. Adapting the cognitive walkthrough method to assess the usability of a knowledge domain visualisation. In IEEE Symposium on Information Visualisation (InfoVis’05) , 2005. IEEE Computer Society Press.
R. Amar, and J. Stasko. A knowledge task-based framework for design and evaluation of information visualisations. In M. Ward and T. Munzer, editors, IEEE Symposium on Information Visualisation (InfoVis’04), volume 04, 143–149, Austin, TX, USA, 2004.
Arnstein, L. Hung, C.-Y. Franza, R. Zhou, Q. H. Borriello, G. Consolvo, and S. Su. J. 2002.Labscape: A smart environment for the cell biology laboratory. IEEE Pervasive Computing, 1:(3)13–21,
J. Bardram, C. Bossen, A. Lykke-Olesen, R. Nielsen, and K. H. Madsen. Virtual video prototyping of pervasive healthcare systems. In W. Mackay and J. A. W. Gaver, editors, Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’02), 167–177, New York, NY, USA, 2002. ACM Press.
D. Benyon, P. Turner, and S. Turner. Designing Interactive Systems: People, Edinburgh, 2005. Addison Wesley, Harlow.
B. Berry, J. Smith, and S. Wahid. Visualizing case studies. Computer Science TR-04- 12, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA, 2004. Technical Report.
Beyer. H. 1997. Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems, Morgan Kaufmann.San Francisco, USA,
S. Card and J. Mackinlay. The structure of the information visualisation design space. In J. Dill and N. Gershon, editors, IEEE Symposium on Information Visualisation (InfoVis’97), 92–100, Phoenix, Arizona, USA, 1997. IEEE Computer Society Press
J. Carroll, editor. Scenario-Based Design: Envisioning Work and Technology in System Development, 1995. John Wiley and Sons, New York NY.
Carroll and J. M. Carrithers. C. 1984.Training wheels in a user interface. Communication of the ACM, 27:(8)800–806,
Chen and C. Yu. Y. 2000.Empirical studies of information visualisation: A meta-analysis. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 53:(5)851–866,
Chenna, R. Sugawara, H. Koike, T. Lopez, R. Gibson, T. Higgins, and D. Thompson. J. 2003.Multiple sequence alignment with the clustal series of programs. Nucleic Acids Research, 31:(13)3497–3500,
Clamp, M. Cuff, J. Searle, and S. M. Barton. G. J. 2004.The jalview java alignment editor. Bioinformatics, 20:(3)426–427,
S. Consolvo, L. Arnstein, and B. Franza. User study techniques in the design and evaluation of a ubicomp environment. In G. Borriello and L. E. Holmquist, editors, Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, 73–90, GGöteborgteborg, Sweden, 2002. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Cooper. A. The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity, volume 1, Sams, Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc.Indianapolis, IN, USA, 1999.
G. C. der Veer, M. van Welie, and C. Chisalita. Introduction to groupware task analysis. In C. Pribeanu and J. Vanderdonckt, editors, Proceedings of the First International Workshop on Task Models and Diagrams for User Interface Design (TAMODIA’02), 32–39, Bucharest, Romania, 2002. INFOREC Publishing House Bucharest.
P. Dietz, R. Raskar, S. Booth, J. V. Baar, K. Wittenburg, and B. Knep. Multiprojectors and implicit interaction in persuasive public displays. In Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI’04), 209–217, 2004. ACM Press, New York NY.
J. F. Dumas and J. C. Redish. A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, 1993. Greenwood Publishing Group Inc, Westport CT.
Dunbar. K. 1995. The Nature of Insight, chapter How Scientists Really Reason: Scientific Reasoning in Real-World Laboratories, The MIT Press.Cambridge, MA, 365–395,
O. Espinosa, C. Hendrickson, and J. Garrett. Domain analysis: A technique to design a user-centered visualisation framework. In D. Keim and G. Wills, editors, INFOVIS’99: Proceedings of the 1999 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualisation, 44–52, Washington, DC, USA, 1999.
D. Fallman. Design-oriented human-computer interaction. In G. Cockton and P. Korhonen, editors, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 225–232, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, USA, 2003. ACM Press. New York NY
J. Fekete, G. Greinstein, and C. Plaisant. Infovis contest, 2004. http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/iv04contest Retrieved 14–12–2007.
J. Fekete and C. Plaisant. Information visualisation benchmark repository, 2004.http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/InfovisRepository/ Retrieved 14–12–2007.
Figueroa, P. Bischof, W. F. Boulanger, and P. James Hoover. H. 2005.Efficient comparison of platform alternatives in interactive virtual reality applications. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 62:73–103,
F. Fikkert, M. D’Ambros, T. Bierz, and T. Jankun-Kelly. Interacting with visualisations. In A. Kerren, A. Ebert, and J. Meyer, editors, Human-Centered Visualisation Environments, volume 4417 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, chapter 3, 77–162. London, 2007. Springer Verlag, Berlin.
Fuchs. Beyond the desktop metaphor: Toward more effective display, interaction, and telecollaboration in the office of the future via a multitude of sensors and displays. In S. Nishio and F. Kishino, editors, AMCP’98: Proceedings of the First International Conference on Advanced Multimedia Content Processing, 30–43, London, UK, 1999. Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Graham, M. Kennedy, and J. Benyon. D. 2000.Towards a methodology for developing visualisations. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 53:789–807,
J. Grudin and J. Pruitt. Personas, participatory design, and product development: An infrastructure for engagement. In T. Binder, J. Gregory, and I. Wagner, editors, Participatory Design Conference 2002, 144–161, Malmo, Sweden, 2002.
D. G. Hendry. Sketching with conceptual metaphors to explain computational processes. In J. Grundy and J. Howse, editors, Proceedings of the Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC’06), 95–102, Washington, DC, USA, 2006. IEEE Computer Society Press.
D. Holman, R. Vertegaal, M. Altosaar, N. Troje, and D. Johns. Paper windows: Interaction techniques for digital paper. In W. Kellogg and S. Zhai, editors, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’05), 591–599, Portland, Oregon, USA, 2005. ACM Press New York NY.
D. House, V. Interrante, D. Laidlaw, R. Taylor, and C. Ware. Panel: Design and evaluation in visualisation research. In IEEE Visualisation Conference, 705–708, Minneapolis, United States, 2005.
R. Iqbal, J. Sturm, O. Kulyk, J. Wang, and J. Terken. User-centred design and evaluation of ubiquitous services. In International Conference on Design of Communication: Documenting and Designing for Pervasive Information, 138–145, Coventry, United Kingdom, 2005. ACM Press, New York NY.
ISO-13407. Human-Centered Design Processes for Interactive Systems. Technical report, ISO, 1998.
Javahery, H. Seffah, and A. Radhakrishnan. T. 2004.Beyond power: Making bioinformatics tools user-centered. Communications of the ACM, 47:(11)58–63,
J. Kelley. An empirical methodology for writing user-friendly natural language computer applications. In A. Janda, editor, Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI’83), 193–196, New York, NY, USA, 1983. ACM Press.
A. Kobsa. An empirical comparison of three commercial information visualisation systems. In A. Jacobs, editor, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualisation 2001 (INFOVIS’01), 123–130, Washington, DC, USA, 2001. IEEE Computer Society Press.
E. Koua and M. Kraak. A usability framework for the design and evaluation of an exploratory geovisualisation environment. In E. Banissi, K. Borner, C. Chen, M. Dastbaz, G. Clapworthy, A. Failoa, E. Izquierdo, C. Maple, J. Roberts, C. Moore, A. Ursyn, and J. Zhang, editors, Eighth International Conference on Information Visualisation (IV’04), volume 00, 153–158, Parma, Italy, 2004. IEEE Computer Society Press.
S. Kujala and M. Kauppinen. Identifying and selecting users for user-centered design. In R. Raisamo, editor, NordiCHI: Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, volume 82, 297–303, Tampere, Finland, 2004. ACM Press, New York NY.
O. Kulyk, R. Kosara, J. Urquiza-Fuentes, and I. Wassink. Human-Centered Visualisation Environments, volume 4417 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, chapter Human-Centered Aspects, 13–75, Human-centered aspects, 2007. Springer, Berlin.
O. Kulyk, E. van Dijk, P. van der Vet, and A. Nijholt. Do you know what I know? Situational awareness and scientific team-work in collaborative environments. In A. Nijholt, O. Stock, and T. Nishida, editors, Social Intelligence Design 2007. Proceed-ings Sixth Workshop on Social Intelligence Design, volume WP07–02 of CTIT Workshop Proceedings Series, 207–215, London, UK, 2007. Centre for Telematics and Information Technology, University of Twente, Enshede, the Netherlands. ISSN 15 74–0846.
Kulyk, O. Wang, and C. Terken. J. 2006. Real-time feedback based on nonverbal behaviour to enhance social dynamics in small group meetings. In Renals and S. Bengio, editors, S. editors, Machine Learning for Multimodal Interaction, volume 3869 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 150–161, Edinburgh, UK, Springer, Berlin.
O. Kulyk and I. Wassink. 2006. Getting to know bioinformaticians: Results of an exploratory user study. In E. Zudilova-Seinstra and T. Adriaansen, editors, HCI 2006 Engage, Combining Visualisation and Interaction to Facilitate Scientific Exploration and Discovery, London, UK, 30–37,
Landay and J. A. Myers. B. A. 2001.Sketching interfaces: Toward more human interface design. IEEE Computer, 34:(3)56–64,
Latour and B. Woolgar. S. 1979. Laboratory Life, Sage publications.Beverly Hills, CA,
S. Lauesen. User Interface Design, 2005. Addison Wesley, Harlow.
MacEachren, A. Gahegan, M. Pike, W. Brewer, I. Cai, G. Lengerich, and E. Hardisty. F. 2004.Geovisualisation for knowledge construction and decision support. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 24:13–17,
W. E. Mackay. Ethics, lies and videotape. In SIGCHI Conference on Human factors in Computing Systems, 138–145, Denver, Colorado, United States , 1995 . ACM Press/Addison-Wesley Publishing Co, Harlow
Morgan. D. 1997. Focus Groups as Qualitative Research, Sage.London,
B. A. Nardi and J. R. Miller. An ethnographic study of distributed problem solving in spreadsheet development. In F. Halasz, editor, Proceedings of the 1990 ACM Conference on Computer-Supported cooperative work (CSCW’90), 197–208, New York, NY, USA, 1990. ACM Press.
D. Neale, J. Carroll, and M. Rosson. Evaluating computer-supported cooperative work: Models and frameworks. In ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW’04), 112–121, Chicago, Illinois, USA, 2004. ACM Press, New York NY.
Nielsen. J. 1994. Usability Engineering, Morgan Kaufmann.San Francisco,
J. Nielsen and R. L. Mack. 1994. Usability Inspection Methods, John Wiley & Sons, New York NY.
North and C. Shneiderman. B. 2000. Snap-together visualisation: Can users construct and operate coordinated visualisations? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 53:715–741,
Novick and D. G. Scholtz. J. C. 2002.Universal usability. Interacting with Computers, 14:(4)269–270,
Pevzner. P. A. 2004.Educating biologists in the 21st century: Bioinformatics scientists vs bioinformatics technicians. Bioinformatics, 20:(14)2159–2161,
C. Plaisant. The challenge of information visualisation evaluation. In Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, 109’116, Gallipoli, Italy, 2004. ACM Press, New York NY.
C. Plaue, T. Miller, and J. Stasko. Is a picture worth a thousand words?: An evaluation of information awareness displays. In Conference on Graphics Interface, 117’126, Ontario, Canada, 2004. Canadian Human-Computer Communications Society.
M. Polanyi. 1983. The Tacit Dimension, Paul Smith Publishing, Gloucester MA.
Poppe, R. Rienks, and R. van Dijk. E. 2007. Evaluating the future of hci: Challenges for the evaluation of emerging applications. In Huang, T. Nijholt, A. Pantic, and M. Pentland, editors, A. Artificial Intelligence for Human Computing, Springer Verlag, Berlin, 234–250, ISBN=3–540–72346–2.
Preece, J. Rogers, and Y. Sharp. H. 2002. Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, John Wiley and Sons Ltd.New York,
R. Pressman and D. Ince. 2000. Software Engineering, volume 5, McGraw-Hill, London.
M. Ramage. 1999. The Learning Way: Evaluation of Cooperative Systems. PhD thesis, Lancaster University.
Rauwerda, H. Roos, M. Hertzberger, and B. Breit. T. 2006.The promise of a virtual lab in drug discovery. Drug Discovery Today, 11:(5–6)228–236,
Rettig. M. 1994.Prototyping for tiny fingers. Communications of the ACM, 37:(4)21–27,
P. Saraiya, C. North, and K. Duca. An evaluation of microarray visualisation tools for biological insight. In M. Ward and T. Munzer, editors, Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Information Visualisation (INFOVIS’04), 1–8,Washington, DC, USA, 2004. IEEE Computer Society Press
Seo and J. Shneiderman. B. 2002.Interactively exploring hierarchical clustering results. Computer, 35:(7)80–86,
H. Sharp, Y. Rogers, and J. Preece. 2007. Interaction Design, volume 2, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., New York NY.
B. Shneiderman. The eyes have it: A task by data type taxonomy for information visualisations. In R. S. Sipple, editor, Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, 336–343, Los Alamitos, CA, 1996. IEEE Computer Society Press.
Shneiderman. B. 2000.Universal usability. Communications of ACM, 43:(5)84–91,
B. Shneiderman and C. Plaisant. 2005. Designing the User Interface, Addison-Wesley, Reading MA.
C. Snyder. 2003. Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces, Morgan Kaufman, San Francisco.
R. Spence. Information Visualisation, Edinburgh Gate, 2001. Addison-Wesley, Reading MA.
B. Stolk, F. Abdoelrahman, A. Koning, P. Wielinga, J. Neefs, A. Stubbs, A. de Bondt, P. Leemans, and P. van der Spek. Mining the human genome using virtual reality. In Eurographics Workshop on Parallel Graphics and Visualisation, 17–21, 2002. Germany Eurographics Digital Library.
D. Stone, C. Jarrett, M. Woodroffe, and S. Minocha. 2005. User Interface Design and Evaluation: Series in Interactive Technologies, Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco.
A. Sutcliffe. Advises project: Scenario-based requirements analysis for e-science applications. In S. J. Cox, editor, UK e-Science All Hands Meeting 2007, 142–149, Nottingham, UK, 2007.
Sutcliffe, A. Ennis, and M. Watkinson. S. 2000.Empirical studies of end-user information searching. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 51:(13)1211–1231,
Thompson, J. D. Plewniak, and F. Poch. O. 1999.A comprehensive comparison of multiple sequence alignment programs. Nucleic Acids Research, 27:(13)2682–2690,
B. Tognazzini. The starfire video prototype project: A case history. In B. Adelson, S. Dumais, and J. Olson, editors, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 99–105, Boston, Massachusetts, United States, 1994.
Tory and M. Möller. T. 2005.Evaluating visualisations: Do expert reviews work? IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 25:8–11,
Trafton, G. J. Kirschenbaum, S. S. Tsui, T. L. Miyamoto, R. T. Ballas, and J. A. Raymond. P. D. 2000.Turning pictures into numbers: Extracting and generating information from complex visualisations. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 53:827–850,
van der Lelie. C. 2006.The value of storyboards in the product design process. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, 10:(2–3)159–162,
G. van der Veer and M. van Welie. Task based groupware design: Putting theory into practice. In D. Boyarski and W. A. Kellogg, editors, Proceedings of the Conference on Designing Interactive Systems (DIS’00), 326–337, New York, NY, USA, 2000. ACM Press.
P. van der Vet, O. Kulyk, I. Wassink, F. Fikkert, H. Rauwerda, E. van Dijk, G. van der Veer, T. Breit, and A. Nijholt. Smart environments for collaborative design, implementation, and interpretation of scientific experiments. In T. Huang, A. Nijholt, M. Pantic, and A. Pentland, editors, Workshop on AI for Human Computing (AI4HC), 79–86, Hyderabad, India, 2007.
M. van Welie, G. van der Veer, and A. Koster. Integrated representations for task modeling. In P. Wright, E. Hollnagel, and S. Dekker, editors, Tenth European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, 129–138, Link¨oping, Sweden, 2000.
D. Vyas, S. Groot, and G. der Veer. Understanding the academic environments: From field study to design. In G. Grote, editor, 13th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics, Switzerland, 119–120, New York, September 2006. ACM Press, New York NY.
Ware, C. Christopher, and D. Hollands. J. 2004. Information Visualisation: Perception for Design, volume 2, Morgan Kaufmann.San Fransisco, CA, USA,
Westerman and S. Cribbin. T. 2000.Mapping semantic information in virtual space: Dimensions, variance and individual differences. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 53:765–787,
S. Wilson, M. Bekker, P. Johnson, and H. Johnson. Helping and hindering user involvement – a tale of everyday design. In S. Pemberton, editor, CHI’97: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 178–185, New York, NY, USA, 1997. ACM Press.
M. A. Winckler, P. Palanque, and C. M. Freitas. Tasks and scenario-based evaluation of information visualisation techniques. In 3rd annual conference on Task models and diagrams, 165–172, Prague, Czech Republic, 2004. ACM Press, New York NY.
Wood. L. E. 1997. Semi-structured interviewing for user-centered design. Interactions, 4:(2)48–61,
Zhang. J. 1996.A representational analysis of relational information displays. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 45:(1)159–74,
J. Zhang, K. Johnson, J. Malin, and J. Smith. Human-centered information visualisation. In R. Ploetzner, editor, International Workshop on Dynamic Visualisations and Learning, Tübingen, 2002. Digital Enterprise Research Institute, University of Inns-bruck.
Acknowledgements
This work was part of the BioRange Programme of the Netherlands Bioinformatics Centre (NBIC), which is supported by a BSIK grant through the Netherlands Genomics Initiative (NGI).
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer-Verlag London Limited
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Wassink, I., Kulyk, O., Dijk, B., Veer, G., Vet, P. (2009). Applying a User-centered Approach to Interactive Visualisation Design . In: Liere, R., Adriaansen, T., Zudilova-Seinstra, E. (eds) Trends in Interactive Visualization. Advanced Information and Knowledge Processing. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-269-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84800-269-2_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-84800-268-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-84800-269-2
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)