D-Tour: semi-automatic generation of interactive guided tours for visualization dashboard onboarding | TU Wien

Information

Publication Type: Journal Paper (without talk)
Workgroup(s)/Project(s): not specified
Date: January 2025
DOI: 10.1109/TVCG.2024.3456347
ISSN: 1941-0506
Journal: IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Number: 1
Open Access: yes
Pages: 11
Volume: 31
Publisher: IEEE COMPUTER SOC
Pages: 721 – 731
Keywords: Dashboards, interactive tours, onboarding, open-world games, storytelling, tutorial

Abstract

Onboarding a user to a visualization dashboard entails explaining its various components, including the chart types used, the data loaded, and the interactions available. Authoring such an onboarding experience is time-consuming and requires significant knowledge and little guidance on how best to complete this task. Depending on their levels of expertise, end users being onboarded to a new dashboard can be either confused and overwhelmed or disinterested and disengaged. We propose interactive dashboard tours (D-Tours) as semi-automated onboarding experiences that preserve the agency of users with various levels of expertise to keep them interested and engaged. Our interactive tours concept draws from open-world game design to give the user freedom in choosing their path through onboarding. We have implemented the concept in a tool called D-TOUR PROTOTYPE, which allows authors to craft custom interactive dashboard tours from scratch or using automatic templates. Automatically generated tours can still be customized to use different media (e.g., video, audio, and highlighting) or new narratives to produce an onboarding experience tailored to an individual user. We demonstrate the usefulness of interactive dashboard tours through use cases and expert interviews. Our evaluation shows that authors found the automation in the D-Tour Prototype helpful and time-saving, and users found the created tours engaging and intuitive. This paper and all supplemental materials are available at https://osf.io/6fbjp/.

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Weblinks

BibTeX

@article{dhanoa-2025-dsg,
  title =      "D-Tour: semi-automatic generation of interactive guided
               tours for visualization dashboard onboarding",
  author =     "Vaishali Dhanoa and Andreas Hinterreiter and Vanessa Fediuk
               and Niklas Elmqvist and Eduard Gr\"{o}ller and Marc Streit",
  year =       "2025",
  abstract =   "Onboarding a user to a visualization dashboard entails
               explaining its various components, including the chart types
               used, the data loaded, and the interactions available.
               Authoring such an onboarding experience is time-consuming
               and requires significant knowledge and little guidance on
               how best to complete this task. Depending on their levels of
               expertise, end users being onboarded to a new dashboard can
               be either confused and overwhelmed or disinterested and
               disengaged. We propose interactive dashboard tours (D-Tours)
               as semi-automated onboarding experiences that preserve the
               agency of users with various levels of expertise to keep
               them interested and engaged. Our interactive tours concept
               draws from open-world game design to give the user freedom
               in choosing their path through onboarding. We have
               implemented the concept in a tool called D-TOUR PROTOTYPE,
               which allows authors to craft custom interactive dashboard
               tours from scratch or using automatic templates.
               Automatically generated tours can still be customized to use
               different media (e.g., video, audio, and highlighting) or
               new narratives to produce an onboarding experience tailored
               to an individual user. We demonstrate the usefulness of
               interactive dashboard tours through use cases and expert
               interviews. Our evaluation shows that authors found the
               automation in the D-Tour Prototype helpful and time-saving,
               and users found the created tours engaging and intuitive.
               This paper and all supplemental materials are available at
               https://osf.io/6fbjp/.",
  month =      jan,
  doi =        "10.1109/TVCG.2024.3456347",
  issn =       "1941-0506",
  journal =    "IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics",
  number =     "1",
  pages =      "11",
  volume =     "31",
  publisher =  "IEEE COMPUTER SOC",
  pages =      "721--731",
  keywords =   "Dashboards, interactive tours, onboarding, open-world games,
               storytelling, tutorial",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2025/dhanoa-2025-dsg/",
}