Towards personalized visualization: Information granularity, situation, and personality

Technology users are collecting data about themselves at an astounding rate. This explosion of data collection has not been matched by users' abilities to assimilate and apply this information. Visualization is a key means of bridging this gap, however, most approaches to visualization neglect individual differences, and focus instead on one-size-fits-all approaches. One proposed solution to this problem is adaptive visualization. To produce appropriate adaptive visualization tools, however, we must understand the relationship between a user's context and the visualization they require. In this paper, we present a study designed to understand the effects of visualizations that are mismatched, in terms of granularity, to user contexts. We show that users are able to interpret data visualizations most accurately and quickly when the information granularity of the visualization they are shown matches their need for detail and we discuss the consequences of mismatching the information granularity of a visualization to a user's information needs. Copyright is held by the owner/author(s).