Interactive visualization of big data: A survey of current practice and potential barriers for adoption

The rapid growth of the amount of available data calls for novel digital tools for analysis and decision support. One of these tools is the interactive visualization of data. It supports users in getting an overview of and insight into vast amounts of data. Although many different visualization approaches and interaction techniques have been proposed and discussed in academic research, we found that the current visualization practices lag behind this state-of-the-art in research. To better understand current tool use in practice and the reasons for this lag, we conducted a survey of current practices in Austrian companies, including the familiarity with and perceived usability of interactive visualizations. The responses enable us to describe the state-of-the-art of big data visualization in Austrian companies from a broad variety of business sectors and to discuss potential reasons for the slow adoption of novel interactive visualization types.