VISUALIZATIONS FOR BROWSING IN LARGE DATA SETS

摘要

In this paper, we describe our work in support of browsing metaphors for use in large personal data sets. Our overall goal is the design of visualizations that allow users to perceive patterns in a personal data set and then to browse for specific information using the visualizations. We have designed timeline-based visualizations centered around browsable variants of histograms and bargrams. We present the details of the visualizations, describe their functionality, and discuss a user trial measuring the performance factors of time to browse for individual files and ability to identify patterns in large data sets. Our results show that, while both histograms and bargrams are both usable and useful visualizations, users indicate that histograms are a better aid to the file searching task.