An Experimental Approach to Evaluating the Influence of Factors on the Cognitive Clarity of Graph Models

Abstract

The paper describes the author's new approach to understanding the idea of cognitive clarity of graph models. A conceptual scheme of structuring concepts related to cognitive clarity is given. According to this scheme, the following are distinguished: factors of cognitive clarity formation, cognitive clarity itself as a set of internal characteristics of the visual image of the model, as well as the effects of its presence manifested in the visual analysis of the model. The properties of the various components of this scheme are discussed, and it is concluded that it is the factors of cognitive clarity formation that are of the greatest interest, due to their constructiveness. Based on this, we propose an approach to the organization of experimental research aimed at studying and evaluating the influence of various factors on the cognitive clarity of graph models, by measuring various indicators that characterize the degree of manifestation of the effects of the presence of cognitive clarity. The idea of this approach is to form a hypothesis about the influence of some factors, followed by an experiment on the analyst's solution of a certain visual analysis problem involving these factors. As a result of recording the given indicators the achieved effect of changes in the level of cognitive clarity is evaluated and the nature of dependence or its absence is revealed, which allows accepting, rejecting or refining the initial hypothesis. A generalized algorithm for preparing and conducting an experiment in the framework of the described approach is proposed, the peculiarities of its individual stages are considered. An example of staging an experiment, the purpose of which is to study the dependence of indicators of efficiency of visual analysis of graph model on the volume of its visual image, is given. The conclusion discusses promising directions for research in this area.