Current interfaces for common information visualizations such as bar graphs, line graphs, and scatterplots usually make use of the WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus and a Pointer) interface paradigm with its frequently discussed problems of multiple levels of indirection via cascading menus, dialog boxes, and control panels. Recent advances in interface capabilities such as the availability of pen and touch interaction challenge us to re-think this and investigate more direct access to both the visualizations and the data they portray. We conducted a Wizard of Oz study to explore applying pen and touch interaction to the creation of information visualization interfaces on interactive whiteboards without implementing a plethora of recognizers. Our wizard acted as a robust and flexible pen and touch recognizer, giving participants maximum freedom in how they interacted with the system. Based on our qualitative analysis of the interactions our participants used, we found several insights about pen and touch interactions in the context of learnability and the interplay between pen and touch gestures.

When faced with the task of understanding complex data, it is common for people to work on whiteboards, where they can collaborate with others, brainstorm lists of important questions, and sketch simple visualizations. However, these sketched visualizations seldom contain real data. We address this gap by extending these sketched whiteboard visualizations with the actual data to be analyzed. Guided by an iterative design process, we developed a better understanding of the challenges involved in bringing sketchbased interaction to data analysis. In this work we contribute insights into the design challenges of sketch-based charting, and we present SketchVis, a system that leverages hand-drawn input for exploring data through simple charts.

SketchVis Video for ITS 2011 [.wmv (1.9MB)]