A Comparative Study of Three Sorting Techniques in Performing Cognitive Tasks on a Tabular Representation

This study investigated the impacts of three sorting techniques on various cognitive tasks performed on a tabular representation. The tasks under study were a multiattribute object selection task and selected low-level analytic tasks. Three sorting techniques, including sorting by a column (Typical Sort), sorting by all columns simultaneously (SimulSort), and sorting by all columns with faithful vertical locations (ParallelTable), were compared with a static table without the sorting feature (Baseline). An incentivized controlled laboratory study with 80 participants and a preliminary eye-tracker study were conducted to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the four different approaches. SimulSort and ParallelTable were found to significantly improve the performance of multiattribute object selection. ParallelTable, however, suffers from an occlusion problem, so it is not an appropriate support for some low-level analytic tasks. The findings were used to propose appropriate sorting techniques for specific tasks performed on a table.