Exploring annotation taxonomy in grouped bar charts: A qualitative classroom study

Annotations are an essential part of data analysis and communication in visualizations, which focus a readers attention on critical visual elements (e.g. an arrow that emphasizes a downward trend in a bar chart). Annotations enhance comprehension, mental organization, memorability, user engagement, and interaction and are crucial for data externalization and exploration, collaborative data analysis, and narrative storytelling in visualizations. However, we have identified a general lack of understanding of how people annotate visualizations to support effective communication. In this study, we evaluate how visualization students annotate grouped bar charts when answering high-level questions about the data. The resulting annotations were qualitatively coded to generate a taxonomy of how they leverage different visual elements to communicate critical information. We found that the annotations used significantly varied by the task they were supporting and that whereas several annotation types supported many tasks, others were usable only in special cases. We also found that some tasks were so challenging that ensembles of annotations were necessary to support the tasks sufficiently. The resulting taxonomy of approaches provides a foundation for understanding the usage of annotations in broader contexts to help visualizations achieve their desired message.