Exploring How Personality Models Information Visualization Preferences

Tomás Alves, Bárbara Ramalho, Joana Henriques-Calado, Daniel Gonçalves, Sandra Gama

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View presentation:2020-10-29T15:00:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2020-10-29T15:00:00Z
Exemplar figure
The three different information visualization contexts that we address in our study: (A) the hierarchy context which is studied with the treemap, circular packing, sunburst, and Sankey diagram idioms; (B) the evolution over time context, where we apply line charts with and without points, and an area chart; and (C) the comparison context, which includes the radar chart, word cloud, horizontal and vertical bar charts, and pie chart idioms.
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Keywords

Human-centeredcomputing-Humancomputerin- teraction (HCI)-HCI design and evaluation methods-User studies, Human-centered computing-Visualization-Visualization design and evaluation methods

Abstract

Recent research on information visualization has shown how individual differences act as a mediator on how users interact with visualization systems. We focus our exploratory study on whether personality has an effect on user preferences regarding idioms used for hierarchy, evolution over time, and comparison contexts. Specifically, we leverage all personality variables from the Five-Factor Model and the three dimensions from Locus of Control (LoC) with correlation and clustering approaches. The correlation-based method suggested that Neuroticism, Openness to Experience, Agreeableness, several facets from each trait, and the External dimensions from LoC mediate how much individuals prefer certain idioms. In addition, our results from the cluster-based analysis showed that Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, and all dimensions from LoC have an effect on preferences for idioms in hierarchy and evolution contexts. Our results support the incorporation of in-depth personality synergies with InfoVis into the design pipeline of visualization systems.