Google Understanding Visualization by Understanding Individual Users - Manual (Page 5)

of usage patterns will allow us to extrapolate a user’s cognitive profile
and adapt the visual design accordingly.
While there exists a foundation of individual differences research
on which to build, in order to make progress toward adaptive visual-
izations, more work is needed to put this research in context. We must
understand what individual factors are important to visualization use
and develop methods for isolating design factors of a visualization.
Only with a clear understanding of both can we investigate why users
respond differently to different visualizations and apply that informa-
tion to designing for the user.
The challenges to designing for individuals are great, but the po-
tential benefits make this a challenge worth pursuing. At the indi-
vidual level, we each stand to benefit from systems that improve our
efficiency and accuracy. At the more global scale, many marginal-
ized and traditionally underserved user groups stand to benefit from
increased access to visualization systems tailored to them, rather than
those designed only for the average user. Finally, this research effort
will result in a much deeper understanding of how users make sense of
visual information. Visualizations are tools for thinking, and we can-
not understand visualization until we understand what people do with
those tools. Understanding that there is no one answer to that question
is an important step towards truly understanding visualization.
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