Introducing aesthetics to software visualization

Date issued

2015

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Václav Skala - UNION Agency

Abstract

In software visualization, but also in information visualization in general, there is a great need for evaluation of visualization metaphors. To reduce the amount of empirical studies a computational approach has been applied successfully, e.g., to graph visualization. It is based on measurable aesthetic heuristics that are used to estimate the human perception and the processing of visualizations. This paper lays a foundation for adopting this approach to any field of information visualization by providing a method, the repertory grid technique, to identify aesthetics that are measurable, metaphor-specific, and relevant to the user in a structured and repeatable way. We identified 25 unique aesthetics and revealed that the visual appearance of the investigated visualizations is mainly influenced by the package structure whereby methods are underrepresented. These findings were used to improve existing visualizations.

Description

Subject(s)

estetika, technika repertoárové mřížky, vizualizace softwaru

Citation

WSCG '2015: short communications proceedings: The 23rd International Conference in Central Europe on Computer Graphics, Visualization and Computer Vision 2015 in co-operation with EUROGRAPHICS: University of West Bohemia, Plzen, Czech Republic8-12 June 2015, p. 65-73.