A Qualitative Study of Sensemaking Through Data Exploration

Systems for non-expert audiences to interact with and use data, such as open data portals and other data exploration tools, are increasing in number; however, there has not been much research on how non-expert audiences make sense of data via these exploration tools. This paper presents a qualitative study of non-experts sensemaking of local data via a prototype of an interactive data exploration tool that was created based upon a series of design principles. As an outcome of this study we present our insights on sensemaking via interactive data exploration tools and we provide recommendations for improvements to the series of design principles that the prototype was built upon.