Systematic yet flexible discovery: Guiding domain experts through exploratory data analysis

During exploratory data analysis, visualizations are often useful for making sense of complex data sets. However, as data sets increase in size and complexity, static information visualizations decrease in comprehensibility. Interactive techniques can yield valuable discoveries, but current data analysis tools typically support only opportunistic explora-tion that may be inefficient and incomplete. We present a refined architecture that uses systematic yet flexible (SYF) design goals to guide domain expert users through complex exploration of data over days, weeks and months. The SYF system aims to support exploratory data analysis with some of the simplicity of an e-commerce check-out while providing added flexibility to pursue in-sights. The SYF system provides an overview of the analy-sis process, suggests unexplored states, allows users to an-notate useful states, supports collaboration, and enables reuse of successful strategies. The affordances of the SYF system are demonstrated by integrating it into a social net-work analysis tool employed by social scientists and intelli-gence analysts. The SYF system is a tool-independent component and can be incorporated into other data analysis tools. ACM Classification: H5.2 [Information interfaces and pres