IEEE VIS 2024 Content: Examining Limits of Small Multiples: Frame Quantity Impacts Judgments with Line Graphs

Examining Limits of Small Multiples: Frame Quantity Impacts Judgments with Line Graphs

Helia Hosseinpour -

Laura E. Matzen -

Kristin M. Divis -

Spencer C. Castro -

Lace Padilla -

Room: Bayshore II

2024-10-16T16:36:00Z GMT-0600 Change your timezone on the schedule page
2024-10-16T16:36:00Z
Exemplar figure, described by caption below
Fig. 1: Example of the small multiple stimuli used in Experiment 1 that varied in frame quantity from 2 to 70, incremented by four frames. The stimuli depicted power (in megawatts) over time (one year per frame).
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Keywords

Cognition, small multiples, time-series data

Abstract

Small multiples are a popular visualization method, displaying different views of a dataset using multiple frames, often with the same scale and axes. However, there is a need to address their potential constraints, especially in the context of human cognitive capacity limits. These limits dictate the maximum information our mind can process at once. We explore the issue of capacity limitation by testing competing theories that describe how the number of frames shown in a display, the scale of the frames, and time constraints impact user performance with small multiples of line charts in an energy grid scenario. In two online studies (Experiment 1 n = 141 and Experiment 2 n = 360) and a follow-up eye-tracking analysis (n=5),we found a linear decline in accuracy with increasing frames across seven tasks, which was not fully explained by differences in frame size, suggesting visual search challenges. Moreover, the studies demonstrate that highlighting specific frames can mitigate some visual search difficulties but, surprisingly, not eliminate them. This research offers insights into optimizing the utility of small multiples by aligning them with human limitations.