Analyzing gaze behavior for text-embellished narrative visualizations under different task scenarios

Abstract We conduct an eye tracking study to investigate perception text-embellished narrative visualizations under different task conditions. Study stimuli are data visualizations embellished with text-based elements: annotations, captions, labels, and descriptive text. We consider three common viewing tasks that occur when these types of graphics are viewed: (1) simple observation, (2) active search to answer a query, and (3) information memorization for later recall. The overarching goal is to understand, at a perceptual level, if and how task affects how these visualizations are interacted with. By analyzing collected gaze data and conducting advanced semantic scanpath analysis, we find, at a high level, diverse patterns of gaze behavior: simple observation and information memorization lead to similar optical viewing strategies, while active search significantly diverges, both in regards to which areas of the visualization are focused upon and how often embellishments are interacted with. We discuss study outcomes in the context of embellishing visualizations with text for various usage scenarios.