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Title
Graphical Histories for Visualization: Supporting Analysis, Communication, and Evaluation
Category
general
UUID
81b7e6beb7424c248bd25f4d94ea232c
Source URL
https://idl.uw.edu/papers/graphical-histories
Parent URL
https://idl.uw.edu/papers
Crawl Time
2026-03-11T03:10:04+00:00
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Graphical Histories for Visualization: Supporting Analysis, Communication, and Evaluation

Source: https://idl.uw.edu/papers/graphical-histories Parent: https://idl.uw.edu/papers

Jeffrey Heer, Jock Mackinlay, Chris Stolte, Maneesh Agrawala. IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2008

Jeffrey Heer, Jock Mackinlay, Chris Stolte, Maneesh Agrawala

IEEE Trans. Visualization & Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis), 2008

Graphical Histories for Visualization. The top image shows a graphical history tool for a visual analysis session. The bottom image shows a behavior graph visualization of a user's iterative exploration pattern.

Materials

PDF

Abstract

Interactive history tools, ranging from basic undo and redo to branching timelines of user actions, facilitate iterative forms of interaction. In this paper, we investigate the design of history mechanisms for information visualization. We present a design space analysis of both architectural and interface issues, identifying design decisions and associated trade-offs. Based on this analysis, we contribute a design study of graphical history tools for Tableau, a database visualization system. These tools record and visualize interaction histories, support data analysis and communication of findings, and contribute novel mechanisms for presenting, managing, and exporting histories. Furthermore, we have analyzed aggregated collections of history sessions to evaluate Tableau usage. We describe additional tools for analyzing users’ history logs and how they have been applied to study usage patterns in Tableau.

BibTeX

@article{2008-graphical-histories,
  title = {Graphical Histories for Visualization: Supporting Analysis, Communication, and Evaluation},
  author = {Heer, Jeffrey AND Mackinlay, Jock AND Stolte, Chris AND Agrawala, Maneesh},
  journal = {IEEE Trans. Visualization \& Comp. Graphics (Proc. InfoVis)},
  year = {2008},
  volume = {14},
  number = {6},
  pages = {1189--1196},
  url = {https://idl.uw.edu/papers/graphical-histories},
  doi = {10.1109/TVCG.2008.137}
}

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