The Usability of a GeoVisual Analytics Environment for the Exploration and Analysis of Different Datasets

A GeoVisual Analytics (GVA) environment is based on highly interactive and dynamic visualization techniques intending to reveal knowledge in complex and multivariate datasets. By depicting information, these techniques amplify human capabilities and facilitate the performance of cognitive tasks for pattern recognition, decision-making or analytical reasoning. However, the question is whether those visual representations are suitable for visualization of different types of data to perform similar tasks. The limited usability studies that have been done on interactive analytical environments have failed to yield a definite answer. Therefore, this paper presents an evaluation experiment on how an interactive GVA environment can be designed that will effectively support similar task execution processes for different use cases. In the GVA environment investigated, four graphic representations of the Space-Time Cube (STC), graphs and maps are interactively integrated to allow data manipulation from location, attribute and time perspectives for overview and detailed analysis. The results of the experiment revealed that the four visual representations in a GVA environment appear to be effective and efficient to explore different datasets with similar tasks, but require some sophistication.