Visual Exploration Patterns in Information Visualizations: Insights from Eye Tracking Jumana Almahmoud 1,2( ✉ ) , Saleh Albeaik 1,2 , Tarfah Alrashed 1,2 , and Almaha Almalki 1,2 1 Center for Complex Engineering Systems (CCES), King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia {jalmahmoud,salbeaik,talrashed,aasalmalki}@kacst.edu.sa 2 MIT, Cambridge, USA Abstract. One of the common problems associated with measuring the usability of information visualizations is understanding human factors of visual perception and cognitive processing in interacting with dynamic data graphs that are commonly used in social computing applications. In this paper, we investigate the cognitive and perceptual processes in the visual exploration process of infor‐ mation visualizations. Increasing interest in recent years has been focused on the development of performance-based usability metrics, (such as accuracy, speed and visual scanning strategies captured from session logs) to address this problem. However, the growing number of new terminology related to eye tracking metrics have caused considerable confusion to the information visualization community, consequently making the comparison of these metrics and the generalization of empirical results from eye tracking studies of data visualizations increasingly difficult. This paper proposes a framework of eye tracking metrics related to interacting with information visualizations which demonstrate the underlying relationships between human factors in gaze metrics and information visualiza‐ tion design factors. Design implications and issues relating to the investigation of these metrics are also discussed. Keywords: Information visualization · Recognition · Recall · Eye-tracking · Human-computer interaction · HCI 1 Introduction The field of social computing has evolved in recent years and many technologies emerged in this field to facilitate the communication and interaction with social data [1]. In order to create more efficient mediums to support social computing applications, information visualizations were used to enhance the cognitive process [2, 3]. On the other hand, the growing interest in the application of eye tracking methodology for measuring the usability of information visualizations in recent years can be attributed to the need for objective measures that lead to insights in user interactions with infor‐ mation visualizations, which would be considerably more difficult to uncover with other usability testing methods. For the transfer and creation of knowledge, information © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 G. Meiselwitz (Ed.): SCSM 2017, Part II, LNCS 10283, pp. 357–366, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-58562-8_27