"What Happened Here!?" A Taxonomy for User Interaction with Spatio-Temporal Game Data Visualization

Abstract

Currently, there is no formal taxonomy for the activities that users engage in when interacting with and making meaning from spatio-temporal game data visualizations. As data visualization, especially spatio-temporal visualization, becomes more popular for game data analytics, it becomes increasingly crucial that we develop a formal understanding of how users, especially players, interact with and extract meaning from game data using these systems. However, existing taxonomies developed for InfoVis are not directly applicable due to domain differences and a lack of consensus within the literature. This paper presents the beginnings of a taxonomy for user interaction with spatio-temporal data specific to the domain of games, developed from the results of a qualitative user study (n=7) in which experienced players were tasked with using a spatio-temporal visualization system to explore and understand telemetry data from Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA 2). The taxonomy includes seven activities organized into three categories: Data Interaction, Sense Making, and Validation. We discuss the implications of these activities on design and future research.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Oct 05, 2021
Source ID
10.1145/3474687

Entities

People

  • Andy Bryant
  • Erica Kleinman
  • Magy Seif El-Nasr
  • Nikitha Preetham
  • Zhaoqing Teng

Organizations

  • National Science Foundation
  • Northeastern University
  • Office of Naval Research
  • University of California, Santa Cruz

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Enterprise Information Systems Architecture and Joint Command Capability Interoperability Support.
  • Systems Analysis and Design
  • Theoretical Analysis.