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Yet despite the great interest in taxonomies, there is virtually no guidance on how to purposefully visualize them. Interestingly, taxonomies are visualized in ways as diverse as morphological boxes, hierarchies and mathematical sets, to name three typical examples. As a result, taxonomy builders face the following question: Which type of taxonomy task is best supported by which type of taxonomy visualization? This short paper raises the awareness of the problem and lays ground for conducting controlled experiments that have the potential to purposefully leverage taxonomy visualizations. We present an experimental design that allows to investigate the cognitive fit between the different types of taxonomy visualizations and taxonomy tasks. Thus, we contribute towards researching whether taxonomy visualizations make a difference when performing certain tasks by using taxonomies.
Taxonomy, Visualization, Cognitive Fit Theory, Experiment.