A two-stage framework for designing visual analytics system in organizational environments

Abstract

A perennially interesting research topic in the field of visual analytics is how to effectively develop systems that support organizational users' decision-making and reasoning processes. The problem is, however, most domain analytical practices generally vary from organization to organization. This leads to diverse designs of visual analytics systems in incorporating domain analytical processes, making it difficult to generalize the success from one domain to another. Exacerbating this problem is the dearth of general models of analytical workflows available to enable such timely and effective designs.To alleviate these problems, we present a two-stage framework for informing the design of a visual analytics system. This design framework builds upon and extends current practices pertaining to analytical workflow and focuses, in particular, on incorporating both general domain analysis processes as well as individual's analytical activities. We illustrate both stages and their design components through examples, and hope this framework will be useful for designing future visual analytics systems. We validate the soundness of our framework with two visual analytics systems, namely Entity Workspace [8] [14,41,46] suggest that the establishment of a general design framework is significant. The objective for such a VA design framework is threefold: firstly, the framework must inform designers to systematically incorporate the support for domain analytical processes. Secondly, the framework should provide a basis for designers to evaluate their system and further help them identify a cohesive technology transition progress, from system design and implementation to its release and deployment [49]. Finally, the framework must serve an educational purpose, contributing to the identification of potential course materials that are necessary to educate others regarding the field of VA [1].However, constructing a convincing and appropriate design framework is challenging. The framework must be validated against existing systems and more importantly, it must give researchers and designers new ideas regarding how to evaluate and improve their own work.Given the need to incorporate successes from diverse VA systems, it is difficult to generate a framework that can summarize and instruct all the design requirements from a top-down perspective. High-level VA design frameworks like [14,41,44,55] are certainly of great value. Nonetheless, little specific guidance or recommendation is currently available to articulate the boundaries within which particular design assumptions apply, leaving the system design to be solely based on designers' prior experience. For example, how does a designer know which analysis method is suitable to characterize an organization? Are there components that a designer should follow to systematically incorporate a domain analytical process? Further, what recommendations exist that specify the appropriate methods for supporting both general and individual analytical workflows? Encouraged by the di...

What May Visualization Processes Optimize?

“…proposed a two-stage framework for designing visual analytics systems [71]. Ahmed et al proposed to use purpose-driven games for evaluating visualization systems [2].…”

Decision Exploration Lab: A Visual Analytics Solution for Decision Management

“…However, their focus is only to show the rule-sets, and not their effects on actual decisions. Wang et al present a methodology and workflow for designing VA systems for decision support in organizations [47]. However, this general framework does not focus on the concrete challenges for BRMS rule-based systems.…”

Towards a product design assessment of visual analytics in decision support applications: a systematic review

“…Scholtz (2006a) and Wang et al (2011) proposed an evaluation framework for visual analytics tools that goes beyond standard usability metrics. The framework proposed by the authors includes focusing on performance attributes such as situation awareness, collaboration, interaction, creativity, and utility.…”

“…The coding protocol was mostly influenced by the evaluation framework proposed by Scholtz (2006a), and Wang et al (2011). From their work, we developed six high level attributes: Situation awareness, Collaboration, Interaction, Creativity, Utility and User-oriented design.…”

“…Using the evaluation metrics proposed by Scholtz (2006a) and Wang et al (2011) as a priori framework, we conducted a systematic review that seeks to evaluate, synthesize, and present the empirical findings in visual analytics literature from 2006 to 2012. The review focuses mainly on papers that developed visual analytics decision support tools (VADS), and provide an overview of application areas, their attributes, and design implications for research and product development.…”