IEEE VIS 2024 Content: What Do We Mean When We Say “Insight”? A Formal Synthesis of Existing Theory

What Do We Mean When We Say “Insight”? A Formal Synthesis of Existing Theory

Leilani Battle -

Alvitta Ottley -

DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2023.3326698

Room: Bayshore II

2024-10-16T15:15:00ZGMT-0600Change your timezone on the schedule page
2024-10-16T15:15:00Z
Exemplar figure, described by caption below
Inspired by existing definitions of insight, we present a unifying theory for the structure of insights discovered during visual analysis. The key idea is that an insight links analytic knowledge uncovered through data transformations/visualizations with the user's external domain knowledge. This core insight structure can then be adapted to form more complex insights, such as through further linking and nesting of existing insight objects. Informed by this theory, we contribute a toolkit named Pyxis for specifying insights in JavaScript code as well as motivating usage scenarios for Pyxis to advance future visualization theory, systems, and user studies.
Fast forward
Full Video
Abstract

Researchers have derived many theoretical models for specifying users’ insights as they interact with a visualization system. These representations are essential for understanding the insight discovery process, such as when inferring user interaction patterns that lead to insight or assessing the rigor of reported insights. However, theoretical models can be difficult to apply to existing tools and user studies, often due to discrepancies in how insight and its constituent parts are defined. This paper calls attention to the consistent structures that recur across the visualization literature and describes how they connect multiple theoretical representations of insight. We synthesize a unified formalism for insights using these structures, enabling a wider audience of researchers and developers to adopt the corresponding models. Through a series of theoretical case studies, we use our formalism to compare and contrast existing theories, revealing interesting research challenges in reasoning about a user's domain knowledge and leveraging synergistic approaches in data mining and data management research.