Persistent Interaction: User-Generated Artefacts in Visual Analytics

Abstract

While traditional approaches in visual analytics (VA) prioritize insight generation and knowledge discovery, we argue that user-generated artefacts—annotations, model parameters, subset selections, spatializations, and other constructs—constitute a significant outcome of the analytical process. Drawing from theoretical models in VA literature, we introduce persistent interaction as techniques capturing user decisions. These interactions, called operations, provide a formalization of how users attach subjective judgments to datasets, condensing this input into artefacts serving specific purposes within broader workflows. We provide a description and classification of persistent interaction techniques and outcomes, demonstrating their practical implications in VA systems for system design, information transferability, and guidance capabilities.