Teaching Information Visualization Yourself
Following my previous post, here I introduce my work on how to teach information visualization. This work is published in ACM CHI 2016 with the title: “A Comparative Evaluation on Online Learning Approaches using Parallel Coordinate Visualization.”
Visualizations are becoming essential components of many data exploration applications. Many people want to learn how to read, understand, and use unfamiliar data visualizations through different media, such as textbook, web page, and video. Beyond traditional approaches, many self-learning tutorials like Duolingo have received attention from those who are eager to acquire new skills. Such interactive tutorials can be helpful for visualization learners.
Our main question was whether there exists difference in users’ learning outcomes (e.g., exam score) between different media they use. We created and tested the following media using a crowdsourced approach: 1) baseline (i.e., no tutorial), 2) static tutorial, 3) video tutorial, and 4) interactive tutorial. Our target visualization for learning was Parallel Coordinates.
The results show that participants with 4) interactive tutorial achieved higher scores than those with 1) baseline and 2) static, and reported that they had a more engaging experience than those with 2) static. In the interactive tutorial, we implemented various activities that follow the experiential learning approach — “learning by doing.” By designing a series of interactive activities, we tried to help users to improve their skills for understanding and using Parallel Coordinates for a variety of analytic tasks.
I recently re-launched a modified version of 4) the interactive tutorial, TIVY, so that you can try out the learning activities and take the test. Please take a look and try out the website to learn Parallel Coordinates:
Teach Information Visualization Yourself: Parallel Coordinates
The website was developed using Ruby on Rails, Javascript, D3.js, & jQuery. Do you have good ideas to teach and learn visualizations? How can we teach other visualizations like Treemap? Please Feel free to share your comments, feedback, and new ideas. Thank you!
