User-Centered Evaluation of Information Visualization Techniques: Making the HCI-InfoVis Connection Explicit

In the last decade, the growing interest in evaluation of information visualization techniques is a clear indication that usability and user experience are very important quality criteria in this context. However, beyond this level of agreement there is much room for discussion about how to extend the variety of usability evaluation approaches for assessing information visualization techniques, and how to determine which ones are the most effective, and in what ways and for what purposes. In this chapter we take a user centered, Human-Computer Interaction-based perspective to discuss usability evaluation of information visualization techniques. We begin by presenting a singular view of the evolution of visualization techniques evaluation, briefly summarizing the main contributions of several works in this area since its humble beginning as a collateral activity until the recent growth of interest. Then, we focus on current issues related to such evaluations, particularly concerning the way they are designed and conducted, taking into account a background of well-known usability evaluation methods from HCI to help understanding why there are still open problems. A set of guidelines for a (more) user-centered usability evaluation of information visualization techniques is proposed and discussed. Our ultimate goal is to provide some insight regarding if and how sound ergonomic user-centered knowledge can be transferred to the information visualization context.