IEEE VIS 2024 Content: Mind Drifts, Data Shifts: Utilizing Mind Wandering to Track the Evolution of User Experience with Data Visualizations

Mind Drifts, Data Shifts: Utilizing Mind Wandering to Track the Evolution of User Experience with Data Visualizations

Anjana Arunkumar - Arizona State University, Tempe, United States

Lace M. Padilla - Northeastern University, Boston, United States

Chris Bryan - Arizona State University, Tempe, United States

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Room: Bayshore II

2024-10-17T16:48:00Z GMT-0600 Change your timezone on the schedule page
2024-10-17T16:48:00Z
Exemplar figure, described by caption below
While consuming data visualizations, the mind may wander, exploring diverse ideas, questions, and connections. Viewers may venture opinions on appearance and convention, report visual patterns and trends, integrate external knowledge, or engage in unrelated thoughts. Where does your mind wander and why does it matter?
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Keywords

Visualization, Mind Wandering, Cognition, Engagement, Recall

Abstract

User experience in data visualization is typically assessed through post-viewing self-reports, but these overlook the dynamic cognitive processes during interaction. This study explores the use of mind wandering- a phenomenon where attention spontaneously shifts from a primary task to internal, task-related thoughts or unrelated distractions- as a dynamic measure during visualization exploration. Participants reported mind wandering while viewing visualizations from a pre-labeled visualization database and then provided quantitative ratings of trust, engagement, and design quality, along with qualitative descriptions and short-term/long-term recall assessments. Results show that mind wandering negatively affects short-term visualization recall and various post-viewing measures, particularly for visualizations with little text annotation. Further, the type of mind wandering impacts engagement and emotional response. Mind wandering also functions as an intermediate process linking visualization design elements topost-viewing measures, influencing how viewers engage with and interpret visual information over time. Overall, this research underscores the importance of incorporating mind wandering as a dynamic measure in visualization design and evaluation, offering novel avenues for enhancing user engagement and comprehension.