| 3D interactive business visualizations transform large data sets into interactive visual representations to aid human comprehension of the data. Creating an effective representation, (i.e. a representation that aids human comprehension) is a challenging task. This paper contends that the creation of an effective visualization is not automatic and in some cases counter-intuitive. This paper presents heuristic guidelines and metrics based on: (1) expert experience; (2) analysis of existing visualizations; (3) visual examples; and (4) research from related disciplines. The resulting guidelines and metrics are summarized into three broad areas, with detailed guidelines under each: (1) Task Knowledge (goals, task comprehension, and data knowledge), (2) Visualization (overall organization, small multiples, complexity, connotation, redundancy, annotation, occlusion, and illusion), and (3) Interaction (reliance and requirement for interaction, navigation, brushing, searching and exploration). |
