Evaluating How Level of Detail of Visual History Affects Process Memory

Visual history tools provide visual representations of the workflow during data analysis tasks. While there is an established need for reviewing analytic processes, and many visual history tools provide visualizations to do so, it is not well known how helpful the tools actually are for process recall. Through a controlled experiment, we evaluated how the presence of a visual history aid and varying levels of visual detail affect process memory. Participants conducted an analysis task using a visual text-document analysis tool. We evaluated their memories of the process both immediately after the analysis and then again one week later. Results showed that even visual history views with reduced data-resolution were effective for aiding process memory. Further, even without inclusion of any data in the visual history aids, the visual cues alone from the final workspace were enough to improve memory of the main themes of analyses.