This came up in class today, after class today, and in other conversations, so I thought I’d mention it. I tried to make this point in the lecture, but probably wasn’t clear enough.
There are many ways to think about task abstraction. What Munzner gives us in her book is just one way. One thing that the book chapter doesn’t do as well as the paper (that the book chapter is based on) is to give the perspective that there are many other task taxonomies and ideas on how to do task abstraction out there.
The taxonomy that Munzner presents in the chapter makes it seem like all tasks fall neatly into the nice little boxes (categories), and that those category names are something fundamental. I wish it were that simple. There are many ways to divide up the world of tasks. And each way has its good points and bad points.
So don’t get stuck on trying to figure out all of Munzner’s categories, or try to shoehorn any real task into exactly one of the boxes. View them more as food for thought. Sometimes it is useful to know if someone is trying to “enjoy” their data (as opposed to hating it?). Sometimes it is useful to distinguish browsing from exploring – not that the words are important, but that the idea that the viewer may or may not know where to look can be relevant.
Yes, even I have gotten into the “defining a different way to abstract tasks” game. If you’re curious, it’s part of my recent paper on comparisons.
