A New Model of Graph and Visualization Usage
J. Gregory Trafton, Susan Bell Trickett · 2001
We propose that current models of graph comprehension do not adequately capture how people use graphs and complex visualizations. Toinvestigate this hypothesis, we examined 3 sessions of scientists using an in vivo methodology. We found that in order to obtain information from their graphs, scientists not only read o# information directly from their visualizations (as current theories predict), but they also used a great deal of mental imagery (which we call spatial transformations). We propose