An Empirical Guide for Visualization Consistency in Multiple Coordinated Views

Visual analytic systems usually provide multiple coordinated views (MCVs) to support data analysis and exploration. Coordination in visual graphics plays an important role in facilitating comprehensive analytical tasks, such as data comparison and cognitive inference. However, individual views in MCVs are probably designed for a specific purpose based on a particular type of data, and insufficient consideration of the intricate relationships among views may lead to inconsistency in visual representation and user interaction across different views. To better understand the inconsistency issues in MCVs and their impacts on user behaviors, this paper reports a study on the analysis and classification of visualization inconsistency based on the reviews of interactive visualization designs and visual analytic systems, and the interviews with stakeholders. We find that inconsistencies are prevalent in MCVs and frequently lead to misleading or even incorrect results. We classify the discovered inconsistencies based on a coordination model of MCVs, and develop an empirical guide for systematic and efficient visualization consistency checking in the design, implementation, and evaluation stage.