Exploring A Visualization System For History Paths

Sammanfattning: Many business intelligence tools aim to digest data into easy, understandable and visualizable information for helping decision-making, while they are still lack of ability to support visualizing the history of selections. This limitation concerns the coming future when everything is about data. Due to it, users are not able to share their thinking paths to the decision. Here a history selection path means a sequence of previous selections. As an approach, it helps users in decision-making and discovery insight. This study investigated an efficient graphical visualization system of history selection paths to support communicating and iterative analysis. We selected tree representation as the main visualization model and also propose features needed for the system. Specifically, we researched the significance of this study, existing solutions and also the proper designs and functions for the idea. It is initiated by user research including targeting users and scenario mapping. Based on the understanding, we applied a parallel design to narroww down the suitable design. As a result, tree representation was selected as the visualization model. To evaluate whether it touched user needs or not, we applied usability test to collect quantitative data and qualitative comments. For making the test environment as real as possible, a webbased interactive prototype supported by D3.js library was implemented for testing. We analyzed the user experience and also consolidated improvements. As a case study, we implemented the solution on Qlik Sense to verify the possibility to place this solution into real data visualization tool. Generally, the result of this study formed a valuable initiative for further development and we saw potentials of this tree model system to be used in other areas when it comes to reviewing history as well.