Does interactivity improve exploratory data analysis of animated trend visualizations (original) (raw)

Effectively analyzing trends of temporal data becomes a critical task especially when the amount of data is large. Motion techniques (animation) for scatterplots make it possible to represent lots of data in a single view and make it easy to identify trends and highlight changes. These techniques have recently become very popular and to an extent successful in describing data in presentations. However, compared to static methods of visualization, scatterplot animations may be hard to perceive when the motions are complex. This paper studies the effectiveness of interactive scatterplot animation as a visualization technique for data analysis of large data. We compared interactive animations with non-interactive (passive) animations where participants had no control over the animation. Both conditions were evaluated for specific as well as general comprehension of the data. While interactive animation was more effective for specific information analysis, it led to many misunderstandings in the overall comprehension due to the fragmentation of the animation. In general, participants felt that interactivity gave them more confidence and found it more enjoyable and exciting for data exploration.