The Shaping of Information by Visual Metaphors

• Published in: IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics 2008-11, Vol.14 (6), p.1269-1276
• Main Authors: Ziemkiewicz, C., Kosara, R.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Biomimetics - methods; Cognition; Compatibility; Computer Graphics; Computer Simulation; Correlation; Data visualization; Delay; evaluation; hierarchies; Index Terms— Information Dissemination - methods; Information Storage and Retrieval - methods; Knowledge representation; Metaphor; Metaphors; Models, Theoretical; Performance evaluation; Shape; Tasks; Testing; Tree graphs; Usability; User-Computer Interface; Visual; Visualization; visualization theory
• ISSN: 1077-2626; 1941-0506
• DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2008.171

The nature of an information visualization can be considered to lie in the visual metaphors it uses to structure information. The process of understanding a visualization therefore involves an interaction between these external visual metaphors and the user's internal knowledge representations. To investigate this claim, we conducted an experiment to test the effects of visual metaphor and verbal metaphor on the understanding of tree visualizations. Participants answered simple data comprehension questions while viewing either a treemap or a node-link diagram. Questions were worded to reflect a verbal metaphor that was either compatible or incompatible with the visualization a participant was using. The results suggest that the visual metaphor indeed affects how a user derives information from a visualization. Additionally, we found that the degree to which a user is affected by the metaphor is strongly correlated with the user's ability to answer task questions correctly. These findings are a first step towards illuminating how visual metaphors shape user understanding, and have significant implications for the evaluation, application, and theory of visualization.