User modeling for adaptive visualization systems

Meaningful scientific visualizations benefit the interpretation of scientific data, concepts and processes. To ensure meaningful visualizations, the visualization system needs to adapt to desires, disabilities and abilities of the user, interpretation aim, resources (hardware, software) available, and the form and content of the data to be visualized. We suggest describing these characteristics with four models: user model, problem domain/task model, resource model and data model. The paper makes suggestions for the generation of a user model as a basis for an adaptive visualization system. We propose to extract information about the user by involving the user in interactive computer tests and games. Relevant abilities tested are color perception, color memory, color ranking, mental rotation, and fine motor coordination