Research On The Design Model Of Visual Analytics Systems Based On Complex Cognition Theory

In recent years,visual analytics has become an increasingly important decision-making means in many fields,such as education and research,government decision-making,biomedicine and business intelligence.Visual analytics promotes users’ analytical and reasoning ability through interactive visual interfaces.However,with the rapid growth of data volume,the diversity of data types and the increasing complexity of problems,visual analytical behaviors become more and more complex.At the same time,the interaction between a human and visual interfaces in visual analytical behaviors is far beyond the scope of simple cognition and perception,and involves a variety of more complex cognition activities,such as sensemaking,analytical reasoning and problem-solving.Compared with simple cognition activities,complex cognition activities involve more complex psychological processes and conditions,and involve the information processing process of human autonomy and goal orientation.Some researchers have proposed that visualization can support,enhance and expand cognition.Meanwhile,cognition research related to visualization can guide visualization design to a certain extent.However,the current research on cognition in the community of visualization is mainly focused on simple cognition and perception.At present,there are still some great challenges in the community of visualization,such as how to design the visual analytics system to support these complex cognition activities more effectively,how the existing complex cognition theories in other fields guide the research of visual analytical behaviors,and how to view the design and evaluation of visual analytics system from the perspective of complex cognition theories.To address the above challenges,this dissertation introduced some complex cognition theories in cognition psychology into the community of visualization to investigate visual analytical behaviors,proposed the design framework of visual analytics systems from the perspective of the complex cognition theories,and took root in the relationship among problemsolving theory,visual analytical behaviors and visual analytics systems under the guidance of this framework.A design model of visual analytics systems based on problem-solving theory,called the VASD-PS model,was proposed.The VASD-PS model not only enriches the theoretical foundation of visual analytics,but also has certain guiding significance for the design and evaluation of visual analytics systems.Specifically,this dissertation mainly covers the following four aspects:(1)The main theories and models in the community of visualization and the cognition research related to visualization in other fields were reviewed in this dissertation.The existing theories,models and cognition research can guide the design and evaluation of visual analytics systems to some extent.However,most of these researches only focus on the external characteristics or simple cognition of visual analytics behavior.The theoretical model proposed in this dissertation is not only fully compatible with these visualization models,but also further investigates visual analytical behaviors from the perspective of complex cognition.(2)A design framework of visual analytics systems from a complex cognition perspective was presented.Complex cognition activities in visual analytics,such as sense-making,analytical reasoning,and problem-solving,were studied from both theoretical analysis and case analysis,and the effect of visualization on complex cognition activities and the negative impact of cognition biases on visual analytical behavior were revealed.At the same time,based on the above findings,this dissertation propoesd the design framework of visual analytics systems from the perspective of complex cognition.Under this framework,the implications of complex cognition theories for the design of visual analytics systems were discussed from the perspectives of visual representation design,interaction design,and cognition bias avoidance.From the aspect of visual representation design,the system can display each state in the process of users’ complex cognition activities through vertical division,and support data processing and analysis at different levels and granularity through horizontal division;from the aspect of interaction design,the system can decompose high-level complex cognition activities into lowlevel interactions and events by the top-down way;from the aspect of avoiding cognition bias,the system can avoid cognition bias to the greatest extent by controlling the randomness of user selection information and other means.(3)A design model of visual analytics systems based on problem-solving theory was proposed.Aiming at the deficiency of the theory of sense-making in explaining the behavior of visual analytics,this research used the problem-solving theory to study the behaviors of visual analytics,and its implications for the design and evaluation of visual analytics systems were discussed.On the basis of these studies,a design model of visual analytics systems based on problem-solving theory was proposed.In this model,data,algorithm,interactive visualization,knowledge and other components in visual analytics are mapped to the initial state,operator,target state and other elements in problem-solving to model visual analytical behaviors.At the same time,the model is also conducive for researchers to view the design and evaluation of visual analytics systems from a new perspective of problem representation and problem-solving strategy.(4)Under the guidance of the theoretical model of problem-solving,a visual analytics system of dynamic association rules was designed.Under the guidance of the theoretical model of problem-solving,the relationship between dynamic association rules and interactive visualization operators was studied.A visual analytics system was designed to help users understand and use dynamic association rules.In view of the shortcomings existing in the process of using traditional tools to solve problems,the system put forward new problem-solving scheme.Under the guidtheance of the VASD-PS model,the system can promote the user’s representation of the problem,and guide the user to apply a more efficient solution strategy through reasonable visual design.The successful application of the system in retail data analysis and traffic accident data.