Concept Lattices for Information Visualization: Can Novices Read Line-Diagrams?

Mail-Sleuth is a personal productivity tool that allows individuals to manage email and visualize its contents using line diagrams. Based on earlier work on the Conceptual Email Manager (Cem), a major hypothesis of Mail-Sleuth is that novices to Formal Concept Analysis can read a lattice diagram. Since there is no empirical evidence for this in the Formal Concept Analysis literature this paper is a first attempt to test this hypothesis by following a user-centred design and evaluation process. Our results suggest that, with some adjustments, novice users can read line diagrams without specialized background in mathematics or computer science. This paper describes the process and outcomes based on usability testing and explains the evolution of the Mail-Sleuth design responding to the evaluation at the Access Testing Centre.