Visual Task Characterization for Exploratory Search

Humans are living in the age of big data, advanced analytics, and human information interaction. The tremendous growth of ‘the data' presents enormous challenges to information-seeking. A naïve user adapts several strategies (e.g., analytical search, search by analogy, etc.) to aggregate the knowledge. Augmented visualization plays a pivotal role via visual cognitive support in user searches (i.e., simple visual search, visual exploration, etc.). Though it is hard for a user to look for specific tasks or visual metaphors, as evaluation of visual task is rarely undertaken, it is unclear what role, if any, information visualizations play in the user search. In this paper, a visual taxonomy is adopted to systematically review key visualization tools to understand the visual tasks and inherent functions and viability. The key contribution is to trace the current trends and advancements on the dimensions (i.e., visual accomplishments and visual implications) and to assert that annotations will provide a vision on the state of exploratory visual analytics, evolving frameworks, and tools.