A Change of Perspective: How User Orientation Influences the Perception of Physicalizations

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As physicalizations encode data in their physical 3D form, the orientation in which the user is viewing the physicalization may impact the way the information is perceived. However, this relation between user orientation and perception of physical properties is not well understood or studied. To investigate this relation, we conducted an experimental study with 20 participants who viewed 6 exemplars of physicalizations from 4 different perspectives. Our findings show that perception is directly influenced by user orientation as it affects (i) the number and type of clusters, (ii) anomalies and (iii) extreme values identified within a physicalization. Our results highlight the complexity and variability of the relation between user orientation and perception of physicalizations.