This workshop brings together researchers in visualization, sonification, and HCI to advance methods for evaluating integrated audiovisual representations. Recognizing that meaning emerged through cross‑modal interaction rather than isolated channels, participants explored frameworks for assessing coherence, accessibility, sensemaking, and user experience. The workshop will identify methodological gaps, share emerging practices, and foster collaboration toward more rigorous, inclusive, and reproducible evaluation of multimodal systems.

Abstract We present an application, and its development process, for interactive visual analysis of brain imaging data and clinical measurements. The application targets neuroscientists interested in understanding the correlations between active brain regions and physiological or psychological factors. The application has been developed in a participatory design process and has subsequently been released as the free software ‘VisualNeuro’. From initial observations of the neuroscientists' workflow, we concluded that while existing tools provide powerful analysis options, they lack effective interactive exploration requiring the use of many tools side by side. Consequently, our application has been designed to simplify the workflow combining statistical analysis with interactive visual exploration. The resulting environment comprises parallel coordinates for effective overview and selection, Welch's t‐test to filter out brain regions with statistically significant differences and multiple visualizations for comparison between brain regions and clinical parameters. These exploration concepts enable neuroscientists to interactively explore the complex bidirectional interplay between clinical and brain measurements and easily compare different patient groups. A qualitative user study has been performed with three neuroscientists from different domains. The study shows that the developed environment supports simultaneous analysis of more parameters, provides rapid pathways to insights and is an effective tool for hypothesis formation.

Parallel coordinates are commonly used for non-temporal multivariate data, but there is little support for their usability for displaying temporal multivariate data. In this paper, we introduce a study evaluating the usability of 2D and 3D parallel coordinates for pattern identification in temporal multivariate data. The results indicate that 3D parallel coordinates have higher usability, as measured with higher accuracy and faster response time as well as subjective ratings, compared to 2D.

The parallel coordinates technique is widely used for the analysis of multivariate data. During recent decades significant research efforts have been devoted to exploring the applicability of the technique and to expand upon it, resulting in a variety of extensions. Of these many research activities, a surprisingly small number concerns user-centred evaluations investigating actual use and usability issues for different tasks, data and domains. The result is a clear lack of convincing evidence to support and guide uptake by users as well as future research directions. To address these issues this paper contributes a thorough literature survey of what has been done in the area of user-centred evaluation of parallel coordinates. These evaluations are divided into four categories based on characterization of use, derived from the survey. Based on the data from the survey and the categorization combined with the authors' experience of working with parallel coordinates, a set of guidelines for future research directions is proposed.

This paper addresses some fundamental issues that need to be considered when reporting an evaluation study in visualization or other areas that develop visual interfaces. Today evaluations are frequently included in publications in these fields, however there exists no uniform standard for reporting formats. Instead there is heterogeneity in the structure and content provided and often important information is missing, making it hard to gain insight and trust in the results and conclusions. Consequently there is a need for an easy to access guidance on how to accomplish sound reporting with high quality. This is the only way in which authors can enable an assessment of the validity of a study and enable it to be replicated by others in order to verify it. This paper presents a first effort to introduce guidelines on what constitutes an effective structure and what content to address and how. It also points out common pitfalls and mistakes when reporting and how these can be avoided. The paper could be used as a guide by authors when describing their evaluation studies and it could also be helpful when reviewing publications presenting such work since the same guidelines for content apply.

This paper presents a review of heuristic evaluation and recommendations for how to apply the method for information visualization evaluation. Heuristic evaluation is a widely known and popular method within the area of human-computer interaction and the information visualization community now also recognizes its usefulness. However, in this area it is not applied to the same extent. In its original form the method has limitations that need to be considered in order for it to be optimal for information visualization. The aim with this paper is to provide the reader with knowledge about the method and awareness of what issues that call for refined or supplemental actions and resources in order for it to generate as valid and useful results as possible. The paper also discusses the research challenges for future work in how to further improve the method.

Visual comparison is an intrinsic part of interactive data exploration and analysis. The literature provides a large body of existing solutions that help users accomplish comparison tasks. These solutions are mostly of visual nature and custom-made for specific data. We ask the question if a more general support is possible by focusing on the interaction aspect of comparison tasks. As an answer to this question, we propose a novel interaction concept that is inspired by real-world behavior of people comparing information printed on paper. In line with real-world interaction, our approach supports users (1) in interactively specifying pieces of graphical information to be compared, (2) in flexibly arranging these pieces on the screen, and (3) in performing the actual comparison of side-by-side and overlapping arrangements of the graphical information. Complementary visual cues and add-ons further assist users in carrying out comparison tasks. Our concept and the integrated interaction techniques are generally applicable and can be coupled with different visualization techniques. We implemented an interactive prototype and conducted a qualitative user study to assess the concept's usefulness in the context of three different visualization techniques. The obtained feedback indicates that our interaction techniques mimic the natural behavior quite well, can be learned quickly, and are easy to apply to visual comparison tasks.

Medical imaging plays a central role in a vast range of healthcare practices. The usefulness of 3D visualizations has been demonstrated for many types of treatment planning. Nevertheless, full access to 3D renderings outside of the radiology department is still scarce even for many image-centric specialties. Our work stems from the hypothesis that this under-utilization is partly due to existing visualization systems not taking the prerequisites of this application domain fully into account. We have developed a medical visualization table intended to better fit the clinical reality. The overall design goals were two-fold: similarity to a real physical situation and a very low learning threshold. This paper describes the development of the visualization table with focus on key design decisions. The developed features include two novel interaction components for touch tables. A user study including five orthopedic surgeons demonstrates that the system is appropriate and useful for this application domain.

Evaluation is a key research challenge within the international Information Visualization (InfoVis) community, and Heuristic Evaluation is one recognized method. Various sets of heuristics have been proposed but there remains no consensus as to which heuristics are most useful for addressing aspects specific to the complex interactive visual displays used in modern InfoVis systems. This paper presents a first effort to empirically determine a new set of such general heuristics tailored for Heuristic Evaluation of common and important usability problems in InfoVis techniques. Participants in the study rated how well a total of 63 heuristics from 6 earlier published heuristic sets could explain a collection of 74 usability problems derived from earlier InfoVis evaluations. The results were used to synthesize 10 heuristics that, as a set, provided the highest explanatory coverage. The paper also stresses the challenges for future research to validate and further improve upon this set.

This paper addresses some fundamental and practical issues that should be considered when pursuing evaluation studies in Information Visualization. The main focus is on quantitative experimental research but the general information applies to all kinds of studies. The purpose is to increase awareness of what constitutes a sound scientific approach to evaluation and to point out common pitfalls and mistakes during the phases of such study. These phases cover how to plan, design, conduct and analyse the outcome of an evaluation and finally how to report in a way that enhances readability, provides details relevant to the outcome and that allows replication. The paper could be used as a guide when conducting evaluation and it could also be helpful when reviewing publications since the same rules apply.

This paper demonstrates the synergy of common InfoVis and GeoVis interaction techniques and the logistic application domain demonstrated in the customized visualize performance data (VISPER) application. In VISPER multi-dimensional, multi-source, time-varying and geospatial digital information from voyage analysis is represented to facilitate decision-making. Using common InfoVis components for multivariate data together with logistics visualization in a new synergy aids the users in their work examining ship and route performance. An evaluation of the usability was performed to gather insights for future development. The results from the evaluation show that the overall impression of VISPER was highly positive and participants enjoyed using it. Feedback obtained was highly valuable and directly applicable for improvements and further development.