The Spatial-Perceptual Design Space: a new comprehension for Data Visualization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new conceptual framework for understanding data visualization design, based on human visual perception, providing a taxonomy and grammar to better comprehend and categorize visualization techniques.

Contribution

It presents a novel visualization design space model rooted in perceptual criteria, offering a new taxonomy and grammar for visual analysis techniques.

Findings

A new visualization design space model based on perception

A taxonomy oriented to human visual perception

A grammar for visualization design techniques

Abstract

We revisit the design space of visualizations aiming at identifying and relating its components. In this sense, we establish a model to examine the process through which visualizations become expressive for users. This model has leaded us to a taxonomy oriented to the human visual perception, a conceptualization that provides natural criteria in order to delineate a novel understanding for the visualization design space. The new organization of concepts that we introduce is our main contribution: a grammar for the visualization design based on the review of former works and of classical and state-of-the-art techniques. Like so, the paper is presented as a survey whose structure introduces a new conceptualization for the space of techniques concerning visual analysis.