Supporting Exploration Awareness in Information Visualization

When users want to continue an analysis performed in the past, done by themselves or by a collaborator, they need an overview of what has been done and found so far. Such an overview helps them to gain a shared knowledge about each otherspsila analysis strategy and continue the analysis. We aim to support users in this process, and thereby support their exploration awareness. We present an information visualization framework with three linked processes: overview, search and retrieve for this purpose. First, we present a userpsilas information interest model that captures key aspects of the exploration process. Exploration overview, and keyword and similarity based search mechanisms are designed based on these key aspects. A metadata view is used to visualize the search results and help users to retrieve specific visualizations from past analysis. Finally, we present three case studies and discuss the support offered by the framework for developing exploration awareness.