ZoomTable: Interactive Exploration of Data Facts in Hierarchical Tables via Semantic Zooming

Hierarchical tables are an important structure for organizing data with inherent hierarchical relationships. Existing studies have extensively explored methods for data fact exploration from tabular data. In particular, some studies have directly integrated visual data facts into the original table structure to support in-situ exploration, because embedding data facts within the table context can reduce cognitive load by minimizing attention shifts. However, embedding a large amount of extracted data facts into the limited space of hierarchical tables often leads to layout conflicts, hindering effective exploration. To address this issue, we propose an interactive exploration paradigm for hierarchical table data facts based on semantic zooming and develop an interactive visualization system, ZoomTable. The ZoomTable system employs semantic zooming as the interaction method, combined with a data-fact layout method and a data fact recommendation mechanism. This combination not only resolves layout conflicts, but also supports users in coherently exploring multidimensional data facts at different scales. A case study and a user experiment further validate the practicality and efficiency of ZoomTable in real-world data fact exploration scenarios.