Progressive Value Reading: The Use of Motion to Gradually Examine Data Involving Large Magnitudes

2026-02-23

AI Summary

This study addresses the challenge of intuitively comprehending numerical data spanning multiple orders of magnitude by proposing a “progressive numeric reading” approach. This method leverages motion-based interactions—such as scrolling or stretching—to transform numerical disparities into perceptual experiences of duration and interaction effort. Grounded in design research, the work constructs a ten-dimensional design space and systematically analyzes 55 representative examples to establish the first explorable corpus of interactive visualizations for this problem. In doing so, it introduces a unified terminology, expands the design space for interactive visualization, and lays the groundwork for future empirical studies. The authors further support community engagement by publicly releasing an online corpus to facilitate exploration and reuse.

Technology Category

• Humans and AI: Interaction Techniques and Devices
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Data Visualization & Summarization
• Knowledge Representation and Reasoning: Geometric, Spatial, and Temporal Reasoning

Application Category

• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Web data visualization
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Practical large-scale studies of user experience
• Semantics and Knowledge: Data modeling to support human-machine intelligence, including LLMs agents, intelligent system behavior, explanations, and user-friendly interactions

Abstract

People often struggle to interpret data with extremely large or small values, or ranges spanning multiple orders of magnitude. While traditional approaches, such as log scales and multiscale visualizations, can help, we explore in this article a different approach used in some emerging designs: the use of motion to let viewers gradually experience magnitude -- for example, interactive graphics that require long scrolling or street paintings stretching hundreds of meters. This approach typically demands substantial time and sustained interaction, translating differences in magnitude into a visceral sense of duration and effort. Although largely underexplored, this design strategy offers new opportunities. We introduce the term progressive value reading to refer to the use of motion to progressively examine an information object that encodes a value, where the amount of motion reflects the value. We compiled a corpus of 55 real-life and hypothetical visualization examples that allow, encourage, or require progressive value reading. From this corpus, we derived a design space of ten design dimensions, providing a shared vocabulary, inspiration for novel techniques, and a foundation for empirical evaluation. An online corpus is also available for exploration.

Problem

• data interpretation
• large magnitudes
• orders of magnitude
• value perception
• data visualization

Innovation

• progressive value reading
• motion-based visualization
• magnitude perception
• design space
• visceral data experience