Designing Visualization Widgets for Tangible Data Exploration: A Systematic Review

TL;DR

This paper systematically reviews tangible visualization widgets used in data exploration, highlighting their benefits, current design gaps, and proposing a research agenda for future widget development.

Contribution

It provides a structured analysis of existing tangible data exploration widgets, identifying design patterns and gaps to inform future development.

Findings

Widgets reduce cognitive load and enable natural interactions.

Current designs lack a structured understanding of task and interaction coordination.

Proposes a research agenda for developing a widget design toolkit.

Abstract

We present a systematic review on tasks, interactions, and visualization widgets (refer to tangible entities that are used to accomplish data exploration tasks through specific interactions) in the context of tangible data exploration. Tangible widgets have been shown to reduce cognitive load, enable more natural interactions, and support the completion of complex data exploration tasks. Yet, the field lacks a structured understanding of how task types, interaction methods, and widget designs are coordinated, limiting the ability to identify recurring design patterns and opportunities for innovation. To address this gap, we conduct a systematic review to analyze existing work and characterize the current design of data exploration tasks, interactions, and tangible visualization widgets. We next reflect based on our findings and propose a research agenda to inform the development of a future widget design toolkit for tangible data exploration. Our systematic review and supplemental materials are available at physicalviswidget.github.io and osf.io/vjw5e.