13 - 18 OCTOBER 2013, ATLANTA, GEORGIA, USA

Exploring the Effect of Visualisation Structure on a Text Analysis Task

Contributors: 
Adam Duncan, Chris Baber
Description
In this research we explore how analyst-constructed visualisations of themes in document collections can act as both a communicative product and an exploratory, insight-generating process. Our aim is to employ visual storytelling to create new visualisation and diagramming techniques for summarising information from a variety of sources. Presented here are the results of a pilot study which compares two visualisation tools, one based on storyboarding, and the other based on Concept Mapping. We contribute a storyboarding visualisation that is novel in the context of visual analytics and intelligence analysis, and is built around the concept of storytelling. The results from our study imply that it performs similarly to a more established technique like Concept Mapping in terms of the relevance of information recorded, but it was preferred by participants when they were required to infer meaning from the visualisations.