Impact of Individual Differences on User Experience with a Visualization Interface for Public Engagement

Although there is abundant evidence that individual differences such as cognitive abilities impact visualization effectiveness, this influence has mostly been shown for fictional tasks/scenarios. This paper extends previous findings by investigating the impact of individual differences on user experience with a real-world information visualization tool designed to support preferential choices in public engagement. We show that several cognitive abilities do have an influence on user experience in this task, and show that this influence can be explained by eye tracking. We discuss how these results are promising towards the design of visualizations for preferential choice in public engagement that can adapt to the user's needs, abilities and expertise.