Exploring design and product development data in high-tech companies using data visualization

In high-tech companies, user experience has become an important part of data-driven product development, but unfortunately the artifacts created by user experience work are often stored in disparate documents and databases, and it is difficult to get a big picture of all the artifacts that have been created and how they relate to each other and to other product development data. Data visualization is one way to approach solving these issues, but how can this data be presented to users in a meaningful way such that both the artifacts and the relationships between them are understood? Three hierarchical data visualizations - partition, sunburst, and zoomable treemap - were built around some early product development data. These visualizations were tested in a comparative exploratory usability test with six users to find how well users understood the data and the relationships between the data. The most significant results were that most users did not know how to interact with the partition and sunburst visualizations until prompted to do so, users had a difference in understanding the data between the sunburst and partition visualization, and some techniques worked very well to keep users oriented while others did not. Future work should first focus on adding a creative element to the tool, where data can be added and relationships can be built in the visualization itself, and then focus on testing the tool again with a more specific audience of strategic planners, UX designers, and requirements engineers.