An Exploratory Study on Visual Exploration of Model Simulations by Multiple Types of Experts
This work addresses the problem of collaborative model exploration for domain experts, but it is incremental as it builds on existing visualization methods.
The study tackled the challenge of helping multiple domain experts explore complex simulation models to analyze trade-offs, revealing different exploration strategies and multi-storyline approaches used by experts.
Experts in different domains rely increasingly on simulation models of complex processes to reach insights, make decisions, and plan future projects. These models are often used to study possible trade-offs, as experts try to optimise multiple conflicting objectives in a single investigation. Understanding all the model intricacies, however, is challenging for a single domain expert. We propose a simple approach to support multiple experts when exploring complex model results. First, we reduce the model exploration space, then present the results on a shared interactive surface, in the form of a scatterplot matrix and linked views. To explore how multiple experts analyse trade-offs using this setup, we carried out an observational study focusing on the link between expertise and insight generation during the analysis process. Our results reveal the different exploration strategies and multi-storyline approaches that domain experts adopt during trade-off analysis, and inform our recommendations for collaborative model exploration systems.