Mobile Information Visualisation : Recommendations for creating better information visualisation interfaces on mobile devices

Abstract: An increasing use of smartphones and other mobile devices puts pressure on user interfaces to work as well on small touch-screens as on desktop computers, and information visualisation interfaces are no exception. Even though there has been a demand for research on mobile information visualisation for many years, relatively little has been accomplished in this area, and the research that has been conducted is often narrow and oriented toward to a certain design. Therefore, this paper aims to give more general recommendations regarding the design of information visualisation interfaces for mobile devices. A qualitative user study was conducted to find weaknesses and strengths in existing information visualisation interfaces when interacted with on a smartphone. For this study, five prototypes were made by which different visualisations and interaction methods were tested by the participants of the study. The participants were given tasks based on the Visual Information Seeking Mantra, which focuses on four types of interaction with information visualisations (overview, zoom, filter and details-on-demand). The results indicate that the interaction with a visualisation is more important than visualisation itself to achieve a useful and efficient information visualisation interface. Other aspects to consider is to have an adequate zoom function, to not have interactive objects that are too small and to avoid over-cluttering. The latter aspect can be solved by either taking advantage of gestures or using more layers in the interface. However, what visualisations and interaction methods that work best is heavily dependent on the data and purpose of the visualisation