Abstract

Online user studies of visualizations, visual encodings, and interaction techniques are ubiquitous in visualization research. Yet, designing, conducting, and analyzing studies effectively is still a major burden.Although various packages support such user studies, most solutions address only facets of the experiment life cycle, make reproducibility difficult, or do not cater to nuanced study designs or interactions. We introduce reVISit 2, a software framework that supports visualization researchers at all stages of designing and conducting browser-based user studies. ReVISit supports researchers in the design, debug & pilot, data collection, analysis, and dissemination experiment phases by providing both technical affordances (such as replay of participant interactions) and sociotechnical aids (such as a mindfully maintained community of support). It is a proven system that can be (and has been) used in publication-quality studies---which we demonstrate through a series of experimental replications. We reflect on the design of the system via interviews and an analysis of its technical dimensions. Through this work, we seek to elevate the ease with which studies are conducted, improve the reproducibility of studies within our community, and support the construction of advanced interactive studies.

Citation

Zach Cutler, Jack Wilburn, Hilson Shrestha, Yiren Ding, Brian Bollen, Khandaker Abrar Nadib, Tingying He, Andrew McNutt, Lane Harrison, Alexander Lex
ReVISit 2: A Full Experiment Life Cycle User Study Framework
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VIS), 32: 2026.
IEEE VIS 2025 Best Paper Award

BibTeX

@article{2025_vis_revisit,
  title = {ReVISit 2: A Full Experiment Life Cycle User Study Framework},
  author = {Zach Cutler and Jack Wilburn and Hilson Shrestha and Yiren Ding and Brian Bollen and Khandaker Abrar Nadib and Tingying He and Andrew McNutt and Lane Harrison and Alexander Lex},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VIS)},
  volume = {32},
  month = {jan},
  year = {2026}
}

Images

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