Examining interaction techniques in data visualization authoring tools from the perspective of goals and human cognition: a survey

Abstract

We review the state-of-the-art interaction techniques of visualization authoring tools. The visualization tools tend to help users in the creation, exploration, or presentation of visualizations. Also, they allow users to craft expressive designs or extract data from visualizations. The review presents the interaction techniques integrated into the tools for those mentioned above five high-level goals. We cover each goal’s tools and summarize how a sequence in the independent interaction techniques leads to the goal. We also discuss how well researchers had evaluated the usability and intuitiveness of interaction techniques. We aimed to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the evaluations. To that end, from the perspective of human cognition, we reviewed the goals, procedures, and findings of evaluations. Principally, human cognition is engaged when they perform tasks in a tool. The interaction techniques bridge the gap between human cognition and the goals they want to achieve from the tool. To sum up, in this review, we present a novel triad ‘goals-interaction techniques-cognition’ taxonomy. Besides, the review suggests the need for further work to enhance tools and understand users.