1. Show Me: Automatic Presentation for Visual Analysis
Jock Mackinlay, Pat Hanrahan, Chris Stolte
to be presented at InfoVis 2007

2. Summary Visual analysis process in Tableau:
Analyst specifies each field via “Add to Sheet”.
Automatic Marks chooses a good/best viz based on characteristics of those fields
Show Me & Show Me Alternatives:
Developed to streamline the analysis process, focus on the user experience
Analyst selects many fields at once
Sees many valid visualizations
Analyst chooses the preferred

3. Summary
Goal: Focus on the user experience to support the flow of visual analysis
Evaluation:
Informal– from customer feedback, employees
Semi-formal– used UI logs from beta testers and “active users”
Three conclusions:
Automatic Marks is mostly correct, 6.8% error rate
Skilled users are not using “Add to Sheet”
Show Me/Show Me Alternatives is modestly used
“We aren’t getting negative feedback about “Show Me”. If “Show Me” is being used by skilled users, then it must be at least kinda good.”

4. Good Things The software is described in good detail
The UI follows good principles
Quantity user data have been collected

5. Room for Improvement
The paper required a lot of software description and definitions
The chart types really provided too much detail and could have been condensed
Who is the target audience– felt more like a user manual or white paper rather than a research paper
The evaluation 

6. Discussion Topics How to define the criteria for “Skilled Users”
How does this software support both novice and skilled users?
What kind of data could be captured that could support evaluating Show Me/SMA?
How can users be involved in improving the software? (Interviews vs. logging)