You can't always sketch what you want: Understanding Sensemaking in Visual Query Systems

TL;DR

This study investigates the practical use of visual query systems in scientific domains, revealing that users often cannot precisely sketch their queries and that effective sensemaking requires integrating multiple processes.

Contribution

It provides a user-centered design and evaluation of a VQS tailored to scientific workflows, highlighting the importance of supporting diverse sensemaking processes.

Findings

Ad-hoc sketch-only queries are less common than previously thought.

Users employ three distinct sensemaking processes in VQS use.

Integration of all three processes is necessary for effective VQS support.

Abstract

Visual query systems (VQSs) empower users to interactively search for line charts with desired visual patterns, typically specified using intuitive sketch-based interfaces. Despite decades of past work on VQSs, these efforts have not translated to adoption in practice, possibly because VQSs are largely evaluated in unrealistic lab-based settings. To remedy this gap in adoption, we collaborated with experts from three diverse domains---astronomy, genetics, and material science---via a year-long user-centered design process to develop a VQS that supports their workflow and analytical needs, and evaluate how VQSs can be used in practice. Our study results reveal that ad-hoc sketch-only querying is not as commonly used as prior work suggests, since analysts are often unable to precisely express their patterns of interest. In addition, we characterize three essential sensemaking processes supported by our enhanced VQS. We discover that participants employ all three processes, but in different proportions, depending on the analytical needs in each domain. Our findings suggest that all three sensemaking processes must be integrated in order to make future VQSs useful for a wide range of analytical inquiries.