Visual analysis of spatial–temporal data in the digital humanities: many possibilities and potential, but many complications and challenges

The visual presentation of spatiotemporal data is highly complex and high in information content. Cartographers develop interactive geovisual analytics tools for exploration, analysis and decision-making to assist users. The research we present here examines how digital humanities researchers use different graphic formats, including maps, as analytical tools. We compare the use of tables, charts, networks, and maps to assess how participants analyze data and complete tasks. An eye-tracking user study emphasizing task completion was also conducted across the four visual types. The stated graphic format preferences diverge from the objective usability performance metrics and from the results of eye-tracking data analysis. The study's findings, somewhat surprisingly, suggest that tables remain the explicitly preferred graphical form among users. However, with increased experience using the tested formats, participants started to prefer the other graphic formats. Based on our analysis of the initial preference for tables in this study, we suggest that graphical complexity is less of an impediment, whereas a lack of familiarity and experience with different graphic formats may be more significant. Further, we suggest that this finding indicates that research designs strive to better connect objective and subjective data collection in research on graphical inference affordances.