Systematic inspection of information visualization systems

Recently, several information visualization (IV) tools have been produced and there is a growing number of commercial products. To contribute to a widespread adoption of IV tools, it is indispensable that these tools are effective, efficient and satisfying for the intended users. Various evaluation techniques can be considered and applied at the different phases of the IV software life-cycle. In this paper we propose an inspection technique based on the use of evaluation patterns, called Abstract Tasks, that take into account the specific nature of information visualization systems.