Understanding the Impact of Referent Design on Scale Perception in Immersive Data Visualization

TL;DR

This paper investigates how referent design influences scale perception in immersive visualization by comparing two layouts (in-situ vs. side-by-side) and three referent sizes across multiple data scales in a within-subjects VR study. The authors measure accuracy via a size-matching task, along with completion time and self-reported confidence, demonstrating that in-situ layouts yield higher accuracy and confidence and show greater resilience to data-scale changes, while medium referents provide faster task completion. The findings yield design guidelines recommending in-situ referents and human-scale sizes to improve perception performance in immersive data storytelling. These insights offer practical guidance for building more effective VR visualizations where abstract data must be interpreted quickly and accurately.

Abstract

Referents are often used to enhance scale perception in immersive visualizations. Common referent designs include the considerations of referent layout (side-by-side vs. in-situ) and referent size (small vs. medium vs. large). This paper introduces a controlled user study to assess how different referent designs affect the efficiency and accuracy of scale perception across different data scales, on the performance of the size-matching task in the virtual environment. Our results reveal that in-situ layouts significantly enhance accuracy and confidence across various data scales, particularly with large referents. Linear regression analyses further confirm that in-situ layouts exhibit greater resilience to changes in data scale. For tasks requiring efficiency, medium-sized referents emerge as the preferred choice. Based on these findings, we offer design guidelines for selecting referent layouts and sizes in immersive visualizations.

Figures (6)

• Figure 1: Design parameters of the referent design that are considered in the study. The Left shows two variations of the referent layout (in-situ vs. side-by-side), and the right shows three variations of the referent size (small vs. medium vs. large).
• Figure 2: Example stimuli of the experiment, with two referent layouts (side-by-side vs. in-situ) across data scales.
• Figure 3: Example stimuli of the experiment, with two referent layouts (side-by-side vs. in-situ) across three referent sizes (small, medium, large).
• Figure 4: Boxplot of scale perception accuracy and efficiency across different referent layouts and referent sizes.
• Figure 5: Scatter plot showing linear regression profiles of the different layouts in the relationship between data scale (predictor) on size ratio (predicted). The Left shows the overall regression profiles, while the right shows the regression profiles for large-size referents.