The Impact of Dimensionality and Color Coding of Information Visualizations on Knowledge Acquisition

Up to now, information visualizations have been mainly used to support information retrieval. In the study presented here, we investigate whether information visualizations can also be used to aid in acquiring knowledge, that is, in memorizing and understanding large abstract data structures. Furthermore, we address the issue of how information visualizations have to be designed in order to support knowledge acquisition of abstract data. To this end, we conducted an experimental study investigating the influence of the factors “dimensionality” and “color coding”. The domain was the building industry. The study provided evidence that information visualizations may foster knowledge acquisition and that two-dimensional information visualizations are better suited for supporting knowledge acquisition than three-dimensional ones. In addition, we found a marginal main effect of color coding, that is, the use of color coding slightly increased performance in a knowledge test. To conclude our analysis, we will outline how information visualizations for fostering knowledge acquisition can benefit from the field of knowledge visualization.

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