Empirical Evaluation of Information Visualizations: An Introduction

Throughout the 1990s, we have witnessed the burgeoning interest and rapidly advancing technologies in the field of information visualization (Card, Mackinlay & Shneiderman, 1999; Chen, 1999; Ware, 2000). This field has captured the imagination of researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines all over the world. Increasingly powerful and visually appealing information visualization techniques are finding their way into everyday life in our information society. The widespread proliferation of information visualization techniques has also highlighted the need for principles and methodologies for empirical evaluation of these techniques. Urgently needed are improved methods in areas such as task analysis, usability evaluation and usage analysis, especially those with special emphasis on visualization-intrinsic user interfaces.