How Much Information Do You Remember? -The Effects of Short-Term Memory on Scientific Visualization Tasks

Abstract

In this paper we describe our experiences and lessons learned from two user studies about the effects of short-term memory on data analysis tasks with graphical user interface and virtual environment. Visualization is a powerful tool for representing scientific data for analysis purpose. Current research progress enables us to create a high fidelity visual representation of scientific data. However, the value of traditional graphical user interface and Virtual Reality (VR) as human computer interface in data analysis via visualization tool is questioned by the domain scientists. We carried out two user studies that asked users to perform data analysis tasks. The first user study compared the user performance on selecting and manipulating transfer function (TF) with different graphical user interfaces in volume visualization to search certain structures within a 3D data set. The second user study investigated the performance difference of immersive VR, fish tank VR and haptic-based fish tank VR systems on four generic visualization tasks. The two user studies indicates that short-term memory plays an important role in 3D user interaction during data analysis task. The pitfall of 3D user interface design for scientific visualization is that too many efforts have been put into the interface itself or technology, rather than designing user interface to match or amplify human capabilities, for instance the limit amount of short term memory and its importance in data analysis process.