Visual information foraging in a focus + context visualization

Eye tracking studies of the Hyperbolic Tree browser suggest that visual search in focus+context displays is highly affected by information scent (i.e., the proximal cues to the value of distal information). When users detected a strong information scent, they were able to reach their goal faster with the Hyperbolic Tree browser than with a conventional browser. When users detected a weak scent or no scent, they were less efficient in visually searching the areas of the Hyperbolic display that had a higher density of visual items. Two countervailing processes appear to affect visual attention in the Hyperbolic display: (1) Strong information scent expands the spotlight of attention, whereas (2) the crowding of targets in a compressed region narrows it. We interpret these results through an integration of the CODE Theory of Visual Attention with information foraging theory. Keywords Focus+context, Hyperbolic Tree, information foraging, information scent, information visualization, visu...