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Measuring Categorical Perception in Color-Coded Scatterplots

Published: 19 April 2023 Publication History

Abstract

Scatterplots commonly use color to encode categorical data. However, as datasets increase in size and complexity, the efficacy of these channels may vary. Designers lack insight into how robust different design choices are to variations in category numbers. This paper presents a crowdsourced experiment measuring how the number of categories and choice of color encodings used in multiclass scatterplots influences the viewers’ abilities to analyze data across classes. Participants estimated relative means in a series of scatterplots with 2 to 10 categories encoded using ten color palettes drawn from popular design tools. Our results show that the number of categories and color discriminability within a color palette notably impact people’s perception of categorical data in scatterplots and that the judgments become harder as the number of categories grows. We examine existing palette design heuristics in light of our results to help designers make robust color choices informed by the parameters of their data.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI '23: Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2023
    14911 pages
    ISBN:9781450394215
    DOI:10.1145/3544548
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    Published: 19 April 2023

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    1. category
    2. colors
    3. scatterplot

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    • (2023)NL2Color: Refining Color Palettes for Charts with Natural LanguageIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2023.332652230:1(814-824)Online publication date: 23-Oct-2023

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