Interaction with the Reorderable Matrix

Abstract

The Reorderable Matrix is a simple visualization method for quantitative tabular data. The paper examines how first-time users interact with the Reorderable Matrix and how well they perform a simple task of finding correlating attributes. Visualizing a set of data is a common task in various activities such as decision making or opinion forming. Typical situations are a person making business related decisions, a doctor examining test results of a patient or an engineer making choices between different constructs. All these situations involve examining complex data interactions in a limited time. In this experiment the participants were interacting with the Reorderable Matrix for the first time and tried to find correlating attributes from an unfamiliar set of data.