Abstract:
Due to the inherent characteristics of the visualization process, most of the
problems in this field have strong ties with human cognition and perception.
This makes the human brain and sensory system the only truly appropriate
evaluation platform for evaluating and fine-tuning a new visualization method
or paradigm. However, getting humans to volunteer for these purposes has
always been a significant obstacle, and thus this phase of the development
process has traditionally formed a bottleneck, slowing down progress in
visualization research. We propose to take advantage of the newly emerging
field of Human Computation (HC) to overcome these challenges. HC promotes the
idea that rather than considering humans as users of the computational
system, they can be made part of a hybrid computational loop consisting of
traditional computation resources and the human brain and sensory system.
This approach is particularly successful in cases where part of the
computational problem is considered intractable using known computer
algorithms but is trivial to common sense human knowledge. In this paper, we
focus on HC from the perspective of solving visualization problems and also
outline a framework by which humans can be easily seduced to volunteer their
HC resources. We introduce a purpose-driven game titled Disguise which serves
as a prototypical example for how the evaluation of visualization algorithms
can be mapped into a fun and addicting activity, allowing this task to be
accomplished in an extensive yet cost effective way. Finally, we sketch out a
framework that transcends from the pure evaluation of existing visualization
methods to the design of a new one.