Ben Shneiderman & Catherine Plaisant Strategies for evaluating information visualization tools: Multi-dimensional In-depth Long-term Case studies (MILCs) (BELIV 2006 at AVI Conference) http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1168158 Ben Shneiderman & Catherine Plaisant University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab Test of Time Award from BELIV Workshop 2016 http://beliv.cs.univie.ac.at/
Multi-Dimensional In-Depth Long-term Case Studies (MILCs) Domain experts (+ our research team) Exploring their own data To produce their research results Using new interactive tools Time-timited structured evaluation (4-8 weeks) Observations, interviews, surveys, etc. Replicated case studies = Hypothesis testing (Shneiderman & Plaisant, BELIV 2006)
TimeSearcher: PhD 2003 2 case studies Genome biology: DNA expression Nucleotide sequences
Hierarchical Clustering Explorer: TVCG 2006 3 case studies Biologist, statistician, meteorologist Survey results from 57 users 94 citations
SocialAction: CHI 2008 4 case studies Pushback from reviewers Business consultant, medical librarian Journalist, terrorism analyst Pushback from reviewers But we succeed 162 citations
Treeversity PHD: 2013 13 case studies
Treeversity PHD: 2013
Multi-Dimensional In-Depth Long-term Case Studies (MILCs) Other PhD students who conducted MILCs David Wang Krist Wongsuphasawat Cody Dunne Megan Monroe Sana Malik Fan Du
The New ABCs of Research (Oxford, 2016) Guide for Junior researchers Manifesto for Senior researchers Academic administrators Business leaders Funding agencies www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/newabcs
Research Methods Method Definition Pros Cons Controlled Experiments Defined task, hypotheses, alter IVs (treatments), measure DVs, run stats, prove hypoths Scientific, reproducible Biases can undermine results Usability Testing Evaluate users efficiency & subjective reaction in use of tool for specific tasks, list of changes Fast, insight to user thought processes Small user sample, short-term, limited scope Case Studies (Design Study Methodology) Longer term, with domain experts, design tool, write up reflections/experiences insight to user thought processes, guidance to refine tool Takes a long time, questionable generalizability