Evaluating user behavior and strategy during visual exploration

Visualization practitioners have traditionally focused on evaluating the outcome of the visual analytic process, as opposed to studying how that process unfolds. Since user strategy would likely influence the outcome of visual analysis and the nature of insights acquired, it is important to understand how the analytic behavior of users is shaped by variations in the design of the visualization interface. This paper presents a technique for evaluating user behavior in exploratory visual analysis scenarios. We characterize visual exploration as a fluid activity involving transitions between mental and interaction states. We show how micro-patterns in these transitions can be captured and analyzed quantitatively to reveal differences in the exploratory behavior of users, given variations in the visualization interface.