Relational and Metaphorical Approaches to Information Visualization: Effects of Age and Graphical Facility

Abstract

Diabetes requires continual monitoring of diet, glucose level, and other personal data so that a balance may be achieved between a desired lifestyle and one that is healthy and sustainable. While ubiquitous computing technologies can capture data necessary to make judgments, individuals need to be able to easily comprehend the data to draw conclusions. To help individuals with diabetis with this task, we designed two types of visualizations, a relational visualization using traditional graph-based techniques for presenting data, and a metaphorical visualization that conveys data using familiar, domain-specific imagery in an aesthetically pleasing composition. This paper presents a comparative analysis of these visualizations which indicated that older individuals with lower general graph-interpretation skills perform superior data analysis when using a visualization based on a familiar metaphor. These findings suggest that metaphorical visualizations constitute a viable alternative when designing informational displays for the elderly.