Examining Design-Centric Test Participants in Graphical Perception Experiments

Abstract

In this paper, we replicate a foundational study in graphical perception, and compare our findings from using design-centric participants with that of previous studies. We also assess the visual accuracy of two groups, students and professionals, both with design backgrounds, to identify the potential effects of participants' backgrounds on their ability to accurately read charts. Our findings demonstrate that results for reading accuracy for different chart types of previous empirical studies [CM84,HB10] are applicable to participants of design backgrounds. We also demonstrate that besides significant differences in response time, there are no significant differences in reading accuracy between the student and professional groups in our study. This indicates that, despite bias in research participants for visualization research, previous conclusions about graphical perception are likely applicable across different populations and possibly work fields.