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PREVis: Perceived Readability Evaluation for Visualizations

Description:

We developed and validated an instrument to measure the perceived readability in data visualization: PREVis. Researchers and practitioners can easily use this instrument as part of their evaluations to compare the perceived readability of different visual data representations. Our instrument can complement results from controlled experiments on user task performance or provide additional data during in-depth qualitative work such as design iterations when developing a new technique. Although readability is recognized as an essential quality of data visualizations, so far there has not been a unified definition of the construct in the context of visual representations. As a result, researchers often lack guidance for determining how to ask people to rate their perceived readability of a visualization. To address this issue, we engaged in a rigorous process to develop the first validated instrument targeted at the subjective readability of visual data representations. Our final instrument consists of 11 items across 4 dimensions: understandability, layout clarity, readability of data values, and readability of data patterns. We provide the questionnaire as a document with implementation guidelines on osf.io/9cg8j. Beyond this instrument, we contribute a discussion of how researchers have previously assessed visualization readability, and an analysis of the factors underlying perceived readability in visual data representations.

Paper download: (6.8 MB)

PREVis scale questionnaire companion: (0.6 MB)

This companion document for the PREVis scale provides possible users of the scale with explanations about the questionnaire items and gives implementation recommendations.

Study materials and data:

Our study materials and data can be found in the following OSF repository: osf.io/9cg8j. Our study pre-registrations are at osf.io/4dcav, osf.io/d9nmu, and osf.io/yex32.

Pictures:

(these images as well as others from the paper that are our own are available under a CC-BY 4.0 license, see the license statement at the end of the paper)

Main Reference:

Anne-Flore Cabouat, Tingying He, Petra Isenberg, and Tobias Isenberg (2025) PREVis: Perceived Readability Evaluation for Visualizations. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 31, 2025. To appear.

BibTeX entry:



@ARTICLE{Cabouat:2025:PPR,
  author      = {Anne-Flore Cabouat and Tingying He and Petra Isenberg and Tobias Isenberg},
  title       = {{PREVis}: Perceived Readability Evaluation for Visualizations},
  journal     = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
  year        = {2025},
  volume      = {31},
  preprint    = {https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2407.14908},
  osf_url     = {https://osf.io/9cg8j/},
  github_url  = {https://github.com/AF-Cabouat/PREVis-scales},
  url         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Cabouat2025PPR},
  pdf         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/personal/papers/Cabouat_2025_PPR.pdf},
}

Other References:

Anne-Flore Cabouat, Tingying He, Florent Cabric, Tobias Isenberg, and Petra Isenberg (2024) Position Paper: A Case to Study the Relationship between Data Visualization Readability and Visualization Literacy. In Proceedings of CHI Workshop “Toward a More Comprehensive Understanding of Visualization Literacy”., article no. 5, 10 pages, 2024.

BibTeX entry:



@INPROCEEDINGS{Cabouat:2024:PPC,
  author      = {Anne-Flore Cabouat and Tingying He and Florent Cabric and Tobias Isenberg and Petra Isenberg},
  title       = {Position Paper: A Case to Study the Relationship between Data Visualization Readability and Visualization Literacy},
  booktitle   = {Proceedings of CHI Workshop ``Toward a More Comprehensive Understanding of Visualization Literacy''},
  year        = {2024},
  pages       = {5:1--5:10},
  articleno   = {5},
  numpages    = {10},
  oa_hal_url  = {https://hal.science/hal-04523790},
  url         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Cabouat2025PPR},
  url2        = {https://visualization-literacy.github.io/CHI2024/},
  pdf         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/personal/papers/Cabouat.2024.PPC.pdf},
}

Anne-Flore Cabouat, Tingying He, Petra Isenberg, and Tobias Isenberg (2023) Pondering the Reading of Visual Representations. Talk at Journée Visu, 2023. Extended abstract (working paper) with talk.

BibTeX entry:



@MISC{Cabouat:2023:PRV,
  author      = {Anne-Flore Cabouat and Tingying He and Petra Isenberg and Tobias Isenberg},
  title       = {Pondering the Reading of Visual Representations},
  howpublished= {Talk at Journ{\'e}e Visu},
  year        = {2023},
  oa_hal_url  = {https://hal.science/hal-04240900},
  url         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/p/Cabouat2025PPR},
  pdf         = {https://tobias.isenberg.cc/personal/papers/Cabouat_2023_PRV.pdf},
}

This work was done at the AVIZ project group of Inria, France.