SAViL: cross-display visual links for sensemaking in display ecologies

Abstract

The main challenge associated with visual analysis using multiple displays is tied to the fact that a user must maintain awareness of and synthesize scattered information across separate displays—some of which may be out of the user’s immediate field of vision. To address this need, we present Spatially Aware Visual Links (SAViL), a cross-display visual link technique capable of (1) guiding the user’s attention to relevant information and (2) visually connecting related information across displays. In essence, SAViL visually represents the direct connections among different types of visual objects on separate displays to help users create semantic layers of documents spread over different displays. To test the efficacy of this system, we evaluated the impact of visual linking on the sensemaking process for text data utilizing multiple heterogeneous displays. The results of our evaluation indicate that cross-display links enable users to effectively forage for, organize, and synthesize relevant information scattered across multiple displays, integrating the different displays into a single cohesive visual workspace to support their sensemaking tasks.