Bridging the Gap Translating Perception and Cognition Expertise with Visualization Research and Practice

In principle, perceptual and cognitive science form an important foundation for visualization and visual analytics. However, while some basic principles (e.g. color contrast, pre-attentive popout) have had significant impact on visualization practice, the application of the sciences of perception and cognition has been slow. A simplistic view might expect that the visualization community should be able to mine the extensive literature of perceptual and cognitive science for ideas to influence and improve our work. In practice, such direct translation seems rare. There are many potential causes of this. For example, there may be differences in goals (understanding people vs. making visualizations), differences in methodology (reductionist empiricism vs. wanting realistic applications), etc. In this panel, we explore why the translation of perceptual and cognitive science into visualization research and practice is so challenging.

@inproceedings{BBFGRW14,
  author       = {Bonneau, Georges-Pierre and Borgo, Rita and Fisher, Brian and Gleicher, Michael and Ropinski, Timo and Ware, Colin},
  title        = {{Bridging the Gap  Translating Perception and Cognition Expertise with  Visualization Research and Practice}},
  booktitle    = {Panel at IEEE VIS 2014},
  year         = {2014}
}