Observations and Reflections on Visualization Literacy in Elementary School.

In this article, we share our reflections on visualization literacy and how it might be better developed in early education. We base this on lessons we learned while studying how teachers instruct, and how students acquire basic visualization principles and skills in elementary school. We use these findings to propose directions for future research on visualization literacy.

Structuring Visualization Mock-Ups at the Graphical Level by Dividing the Display Space.

Mock-ups are rapid, low fidelity prototypes, that are used in many design-related fields to generate and share ideas. While their creation is supported by many mature methods and tools, surprisingly few are suited for the needs of information visualization. In this article, we introduce a novel approach to creating visualizations mock-ups, based on a dialogue between graphic design and parametric toolkit explorations. Our approach consists in iteratively subdividing the display space, while progressively informing each division with realistic data. We show that a wealth of mock-ups can easily be created using only temporary data attributes, as we wait for more realistic data to become available. We describe the implementation of this approach in a D3-based toolkit, which we use to highlight its generative power, and we discuss the potential for transitioning towards higher fidelity prototypes.

An Exploratory Study of Word-Scale Graphics in Data-Rich Text Documents.

We contribute an investigation of the design and function of word-scale graphics and visualizations embedded in text documents. Word-scale graphics include both data-driven representations such as word-scale visualizations and sparklines, and non-data-driven visual marks. Their design, function, and use has so far received little research attention. We present the results of an open ended exploratory study with nine graphic designers. The study resulted in a rich collection of different types of graphics, data provenance, and relationships between text, graphics, and data. Based on this corpus, we present a systematic overview of word-scale graphic designs, and examine how designers used them. We also discuss the designers' goals in creating their graphics, and characterize how they used word-scale graphics to visualize data, add emphasis, and create alternative narratives. Building on these examples, we discuss implications for the design of authoring tools for word-scale graphics and visualizations, and explore how new authoring environments could make it easier for designers to integrate them into documents.

Using Gap Charts to Visualize the Temporal Evolution of Ranks and Scores.

To address the limitations of traditional line chart approaches, in particular rank charts (RCs) and score charts (SCs), a novel class of line charts called gap charts (GCs) show entries that are ranked over time according to a performance metric. The main advantages of GCs are that entries never overlap (only changes in rank generate limited overlap between time steps) and gaps between entries show the magnitude of their score difference. The authors evaluate the effectiveness of GCs for performing different types of tasks and find that they outperform standard time-dependent ranking visualizations for tasks that involve identifying and understanding evolutions in both ranks and scores. They also show that GCs are a generic and scalable class of line charts by applying them to a variety of different datasets.

Suggested Interactivity: Seeking Perceived Affordances for Information Visualization.

In this article, we investigate methods for suggesting the interactivity of online visualizations embedded with text. We first assess the need for such methods by conducting three initial experiments on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. We then present a design space for Suggested Interactivity (i. e., visual cues used as perceived affordances-SI), based on a survey of 382 HTML5 and visualization websites. Finally, we assess the effectiveness of three SI cues we designed for suggesting the interactivity of bar charts embedded with text. Our results show that only one cue (SI3) was successful in inciting participants to interact with the visualizations, and we hypothesize this is because this particular cue provided feedforward.

A Principled Way of Assessing Visualization Literacy.

We describe a method for assessing the visualization literacy (VL) of a user. Assessing how well people understand visualizations has great value for research (e. g., to avoid confounds), for design (e. g., to best determine the capabilities of an audience), for teaching (e. g., to assess the level of new students), and for recruiting (e. g., to assess the level of interviewees). This paper proposes a method for assessing VL based on Item Response Theory. It describes the design and evaluation of two VL tests for line graphs, and presents the extension of the method to bar charts and scatterplots. Finally, it discusses the reimplementation of these tests for fast, effective, and scalable web-based use.