MyBrush: Brushing and Linking with Personal Agency

Area of Science:

• Information Visualization
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Data Analysis

Background:

• Brushing and linking are established interactive techniques for exploring relationships in data visualizations.
• Existing methods offer limited user control over the source, link, and target components of the interaction.
• Personal agency in interactive data exploration remains an underexplored area.

Purpose of the Study:

• To extend the brushing and linking technique by incorporating personal agency.
• To develop a design space for deconstructing brushing and linking interactions.
• To introduce MyBrush, an interface enabling user configuration of brushing and linking parameters.

Main Methods:

• Mapping existing brushing and linking research into a design space with source, link, and target components.
• Developing MyBrush, a unified interface for personalized brushing and linking.
• Conducting three focus groups with diverse participants to evaluate the interface.

Main Results:

• MyBrush provides users with personal agency to configure source, link, and target for multiple brushes.
• Participants leveraged personal agency in varied ways, including complex task execution.
• Users demonstrated the ability to explicitly show data relationships through customized linking.

Conclusions:

• Personal agency significantly enhances the flexibility and expressiveness of brushing and linking techniques.
• The MyBrush interface effectively supports diverse user needs and interaction styles.
• Future research should further investigate the impact of personal agency on information visualization effectiveness.