Grid Labeling: Crowdsourcing Task-Specific Importance from Visualizations

Abstract: Knowing where people look in visualizations is key to effective design. Yet, existing research primarily focuses on free-viewing-based saliency models - although visual attention is inherently task-dependent. Collecting task-relevant importance data remains a resource-intensive challenge. To address this, we introduce Grid Labeling - a novel annotation method for collecting task-specific importance data to enhance saliency prediction models. Grid Labeling dynamically segments visualizations into Adaptive Grids, enabling efficient, low-effort annotation while adapting to visualization structure. We conducted a human subject study comparing Grid Labeling with existing annotation methods, ImportAnnots, and BubbleView across multiple metrics. Results show that Grid Labeling produces the least noisy data and the highest inter-participant agreement with fewer participants while requiring less physical (e.g., clicks/mouse movements) and cognitive effort. An interactive demo is available at https://jangsus1.github.io/Grid-Labeling.