UNIVERSITY EXAMINATIONS: 2018/2019
EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF SCIENCE IN
DATA ANALYTICS
MDA 5302: HUMAN PERCEPTION & INFORMATION VISUALIZATION
DATE: AUGUST, 2019 TIME: 2 HOURS
INSTRUCTIONS: Answer Question One & ANY OTHER TWO questions.
QUESTION ONE (20 MARKS)
a) EXPLAIN the role(s) of human perception and cognition in the discipline of information
Visualization.
(5 Marks)
b) Intelligence analysts must explore and evaluate volumes of data, from narrative recordings of field
agents to open source news articles. Insights from visual analytics projects and a hypothetical
scenario show the potential of visual analytics to aid these investigations.
DISCUSS how this is possible.
(5 Marks)
c) HIGHLIGHT major design consideration in information visualization
(5 Marks)
d) DESCRIBE the major considerations in evaluating
information visualization applications?
(5 Marks)
QUESTION TWO (15 MARKS)
Discuss how the Technology Acceptance Model and the Diffusion of Innovations theory can be deployed
to develop a framework for evaluating information visualization adoption.
(10 Marks)
These days, many people carry small, portable display devices with them, such as mobile phones and PDAs.
DISCUSS the ramifications of migrating to a small display for the visualization techniques.
(5 Marks)
QUESTION THREE (15 MARKS)
A pre-attentive visual property is one that is processed in spatial memory without our conscious action. In
essence it takes less than 500 milliseconds for the eye and the brain to process a pre-attentive property of
any image.
a) HOW is this knowledge important to Information Visualization discipline?
(8 Marks)
b) EXPLAIN using specific examples, the relevance of at least 3 (three) of these features.
(7 Marks)
QUESTION FOUR (15 MARKS)
a) DESCRIBE software functionalities and environment that enhances the pursuits of an exploratory goal
in visualization.
(7 Marks)
b) Think of three activities you perform on a daily or weekly basis that you currently do without
visualization, but that could potentially benefit from the introduction of visual tools. DESCRIBE some
ideas for displaying the data or information and for interacting with the resulting views.
(8 Marks)
