An heuristic set for evaluation in information visualization

  • Authors:
  • Camilla Forsell;Jimmy Johansson

  • Affiliations:
  • Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden;Linköping University, Norrköping, Sweden

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Evaluation is a key research challenge within the international Information Visualization (InfoVis) community, and Heuristic Evaluation is one recognized method. Various sets of heuristics have been proposed but there remains no consensus as to which heuristics are most useful for addressing aspects specific to the complex interactive visual displays used in modern InfoVis systems. This paper presents a first effort to empirically determine a new set of such general heuristics tailored for Heuristic Evaluation of common and important usability problems in InfoVis techniques. Participants in the study rated how well a total of 63 heuristics from 6 earlier published heuristic sets could explain a collection of 74 usability problems derived from earlier InfoVis evaluations. The results were used to synthesize 10 heuristics that, as a set, provided the highest explanatory coverage. The paper also stresses the challenges for future research to validate and further improve upon this set.