Do Defaults Matter?: Evaluating the Effect of Defaults on User Preference for Multi-Class Scatterplots
Pages 91 - 95
Abstract
With the increasing availability and popularity of visualization tools, it is easier than ever to create visual representations of data. The available tools and libraries work for a range of users from non-programmers to those with significant programming experience. A major challenge, however, is that a majority of users frequently stick with the default settings when using software.
In this paper, we evaluate the effect of using defaults when visualizing the same data in four widely-used visualization tools: Tableau Desktop, Microsoft Excel, the ggplot2 R library, and the matplotlib Python library. We used the default settings in these tools to create multi-class scatterplots for several synthetic datasets generated using the scikit-learn package in Python.
We conducted a within-subjects pilot study with 39 users and a follow-up study with 202 users to explore whether users have strong preferences for different default settings. We found that computer science students prefer ggplot2, females preferred Tableau, young users or those with some college preferred Excel, and users in most other categories preferred matplotlib.
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Published: 24 September 2016
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VINCI '16
VINCI '16: The 9th International Symposium on Visual Information Communication and Interaction
September 24 - 26, 2016
TX, Dallas, USA
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