User Perception and Eye Movement on A Pandemic Data Visualization Dashboard

Area of Science:

• Human-Computer Interaction
• Information Visualization
• Cognitive Psychology

Background:

• Effective data visualization is crucial for public health information dissemination.
• COVID-19 dashboards present complex epidemiological data to diverse users.
• Understanding user perception and cognition is key to optimizing dashboard design.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore user perceptual and cognitive states while interacting with a COVID-19 dashboard.
• To identify user expectations for obtaining outbreak information.
• To inform design implications for future data visualization and disaster dashboards.

Main Methods:

• A two-phase user experiment involving 27 participants.
• Phase one: Interaction with dashboards featuring varied color arrangements for specific visualization tasks.
• Phase two: Eye-tracking experiment to analyze visual attention patterns.

Main Results:

• Users expect dashboards to provide both global trends and specific regional/temporal data for rapid information acquisition.
• User attention allocation varied based on individual visual and reading patterns.
• Eye-tracking revealed unexpected attention clustering around text and headings, not primarily on data visualizations.
• Preferred color schemes were alarming but avoided inducing panic.

Conclusions:

• User interaction with COVID-19 dashboards is influenced by a desire for efficient information retrieval and individual cognitive processes.
• Dashboard design should consider user expectations for data scope and prioritize clear textual information alongside visualizations.
• Color choices in public health dashboards should balance urgency with user emotional responses.