The Spatial-Perceptual Design Space: a new comprehension for Data Visualization

Abstract: We revisit the design space of visualizations aiming at identifying and relating its components. In this sense, we establish a model to examine the process through which visualizations become expressive for users. This model has leaded us to a taxonomy oriented to the human visual perception, a conceptualization that provides natural criteria in order to delineate a novel understanding for the visualization design space. The new organization of concepts that we introduce is our main contribution: a grammar for the visualization design based on the review of former works and of classical and state-of-the-art techniques. Like so, the paper is presented as a survey whose structure introduces a new conceptualization for the space of techniques concerning visual analysis.