Formulating the design rationale of visual representation

8pWhen designing a representation, a designer implicitly formulates a method required to understand and use the representation effectively. This paper aims at making the method explicit, in order to help designers elicit their design choices. In particular, we present a set of concepts to systematically analyze what a user must theoretically do visually to find information. The analysis consists in a decomposition of the activity of scanning into elementary visualization operations. We show how the analysis applies on various existing representation, and how expected benefits can be expressed in terms of elementary operations. The decomposition highlights the challenges encountered by a user when figuring out a representation, and helps designer to exhibit possible flaws in their design.The set of elementary operations form the basis of a shared, common language for representation designers

A descriptive model of visual scanning

International audienceWhen designing a representation, a designer implicitly formulates a sequence of visual tasks required to understand and use the representation effectively. This paper aims to make the sequence of visual tasks explicit, in order to help designers eliciting their design choices. In particular, we present a set of concepts to systematically analyze what a user must theoretically do to decipher representation. The analysis consists of a decomposition of the activity of scanning into elementary visualization operations. We show how the analysis applies to various existing representations, and how expected benefits can be expressed in terms of elementary operations. The set of elementary operations form the basis of a shared, common language for representation designers. The decomposition highlights the challenges encountered by a user when deciphering a representation, and helps designers to exhibit possible flaws in their design, justify their choices, and compare designs

Visual scanning as a reference framework for interactive representation design

International audienceWhen designing a representation, the designer implicitly formulates a sequence of visual tasks required to understand and use the representation effectively. This paper aims at making the sequence of visual tasks explicit in order to help designers elicit their design choices. In particular, we present a set of concepts to systematically analyse what a user must theoretically do to decipher representations. The analysis consists of a decomposition of the activity of scanning into elementary visualization operations. We show how the analysis applies to various existing representations, and how expected benefits can be expressed in terms of elementary operations. The set of elementary operations form the basis of a shared language for representation designers. The decomposition highlights the challenges encountered by a user when deciphering a representation and helps designers to exhibit possible flaws in their design, justify their choices, and compare designs. We also show that interaction with a representation can be considered as facilitation to perform the elementary operations

A perception/action substrate for cognitive modeling in HCI

Letter value "E" line-pos ...) In the default optimizing mode of the visual interface, processing is object-based, under the assumption of perfect visual recognition ability. Cognitive operators have direct access to objects such as the one above, and characters and strings are automatically processed with no chance for error. In the non-optimizing mode, however, processing is feature-based, rather than object-based. Characters are represented in an LED form that contains sixteen line segments, which constitute distinct visual features that must be processed for recognition. Once recognized, objects---their identity as well as their associated features---are available as chunks in the higher-level cognitive process. The implementation of the visual interface for ACT-R/PM is based on the interface construction facility built into Macintosh Common Lisp. The modeler constructs an interface in the MCL interface toolkit, and then translation routines automatically build iconic represent..