Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
programmer (or company), but based on user feedback, e.g. if the user calls a certain
feature of the software very frequently, it will get a hotkey.
Although UX could be applied universally to every visualization system, these
features are gaining more importance in the scientific visualization context [
27
].
They consist of the following aspects:
Perception Factors
Users are part of the visualization process. Thus, human factors should be strongly
considered in order to improve the visualization design. A faithful representation is
not the only goal. Visualization can go beyond incorporating different features that
human perception can decode; it might take advantages of the mechanisms in the
human visual system.
Use of color:
Considerations of color theory (distance, linear separation, cat-
egories) can help choosing colors that facilitate understanding [
32
,
33
]. As an
example, red color can help to bring the user attention to an important feature, e.g.
abnormalities in a biomedical scan.
Texture:
The use of perceptual texture elements also known as pexels, character-
ized by color, density, height, orientation or randomness can help users in shape
perception [
33
].
Pre-attentive processing:
A limited group of visual features can be processed
unconsciously by obtaining information from the visualization without the need
for focused attention, independent of the number of data elements and the display
size [
32
].
Other relevant aspects are shape, size, contour, sharpness and the use of 3D primitives
[
34
]. However, these features together are not always favorable: a combination in a
specific application should be evaluated.
Innovative and Standardized Representations
Visualizing new types of data or supporting new analysis tasks accelerates the appear-
ance of innovative representations. The problem for the users is the lack of standards
in representations. Walter et al. proposed both innovative and standardized represen-
tations [
1
]. Perception of information not only depends on how the visualization is
designed, but also on the viewer's understanding of the given symbol system, e.g.
hard tissues are represented with white color, soft tissues black. This results in two
aspects:
educating viewers may improve their data understanding (helping them to gain
new insights) [
35
] and
the usability could be enhanced by the adoption of standards in representation.
