Bar Graphs and Small Screens: Mitigating Cognitive Load in Mobile Visualizations

Abstract

The literature separately addresses issues related to mobile visualization techniques (Chae & Kim, 2004; Chittaro, 2006; Chittaro & Camaggio, 2002; Gutwin & Fedak, 2004) and visuospatial working memory demand (Baddeley & Hitch, 1994; Huang et al., 2006; Plumlee & Ware, 2006; Lecerf & de Ribaupierre, 2005). The current study investigated the effect of zooming on graph-reading performance under lower and higher cognitive loads, finding that a visualization that reduced working memory demands both stabilized performance under different task load conditions and reduced error. We propose a theory of mobile visualization that capitalizes on a reduction in working memory demand to reduce errors in performance.

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References

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