Understanding the Role and Value of Interaction: First Steps

Visual Analytics strongly emphasizes the importance of interaction. However, until now, interaction is only spar- ingly treated as subject matter on its own. How and why interactivity is beneficial to gain insight and make decisions is mostly left in the dark. Due to this lack of initial direction, it seems important to make further attempts in facilitating a deeper understanding of the concept of interactivity. Therefore, different perspectives towards interactivity are discussed and cognitive theories and models are investigated. The main aim of this paper is to broaden the view on interaction and spark further discussion towards a sound theoretical grounding for the field.