Polaris

Polaris is not a commercially available product, so could not be used by our users, but nonetheless uses some interesting visualization and interaction techniques that are applicable to our users needs. The most prominent feature of Polaris is its use of a common analysis technique, the crosstab, but in a graphical form. This allows users who are comfortable with crosstabs to quickly and easily compare variables. We found this most interesting because some of our users had mentioned crosstabs during the interviews.

Since Polaris was designed to be used with any dataset, it allows the user to decide what kind of chart should be shown. While this flexibility is useful, it does allow the creation of meaningless or misleading charts. It does, however, use some visual cues to direct the user away from mistakes, such as coloring coding the variables by type (ordinal/nominal vs. quantitative)

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Strengths and Weaknesses:

Strengths:

• Easy drag and drop of variables is easy to use.
• Variables are color-coded based on nominal/ordinal vs. quantitative so that users can easily distinguish between data characteristics and be less likely to try and make misleading charts. (see Image P-2)
• When placing variables on axes or other widgets, feedback is given to signify if that type of data can be placed there. This also prevents errors.
• Use of small multiples allows for the display of multivariate data without incurring excess cognitive load. Patterns and outliers are easily recognized.
• Modeled after familiar pivot table/crosstab model that some users already use.

Weaknesses:

• Users are unable to save preferences or settings, so they have to start over in each session.
• Inappropriate chart types are not gray-ed out or made unavailable, instead they just don't work or look wrong.
• No access to raw data behind graphs.
• Some labels are confusing (e.g., what is the difference between Sort and Group? And what does aggregating data mean in relation to the Group function?)
• Drag and drop functionality is hidden from the user, and it is an unusual interaction so its possible that a new user would not know how to begin exploring.