User preferences toward information visualization design techniques: a comparative study

The main research question of this dissertation study was to see if people with differing cognitive preferences, particularly visuals and read-writes, had a difference in response to encodings of color, size, and shape, in an information visualization tool. Adults, with either visual preference or with read-write preference, were the sample of the population. A survey was administered to obtain response towards encodings of color, size, and shape in a visual as well as in a non-visual/textual counterpart. All questions were randomized. An independent sample t-test was done to determine the difference between the two groups and paired samples t-test was used to test for significance between means of pairs within one group (either visuals or read-write). The findings of this dissertation study are important for information visualization tools that are just being commercialized, to be adopted by a broader group of users. It was found that visuals and read-writes respond very differently to visual techniques of color, size, and shape. Visuals like all the three encodings more than the read-writes. However, read-writes like information presented in a textual version more than the visuals. This study found that among the three encodings, color seems to be most liked, followed by size, and shape for people with visual preference while read-writes seem to have a preference for size encodings over shape and color. Though visuals like shape yet as the number of shapes increases visuals' subjective satisfaction decreases towards such displays. The results reported here identifies a need for new processes to build visualization tools that adapt to the need of people with differing cognitive styles so that such people can work independently as well as collaboratively with each other.