infonet-economy

Augmenting 3D virtual environments (3DVEs) with additional abstract information, with different data types (such as numbers, texts, images and videos) amplifies and enhances the user's spatial cognition and understanding of geometrical objects in order to perform specific tasks which require both abstract information and a 3D scene. Many interactive information visualization techniques have been created to incorporate abstract information into 3DVEs. The designers of 3DVEs are faced with the challenge of selecting a specific information visualization technique or creating a novel technique according to their specific design needs and contexts. Therefore, a toolkit for the usability evaluation is needed to help them compare the usability of different information visualization techniques according to specific design needs and contexts. Our main objective is to create such toolkit for performing usability tests in order to complete a reusable evaluation grid for comparing the usability of visualization techniques in different evaluation contexts. In this article, we present an evaluation framework and toolkit that we have developed in order to perform usability tests.