Cognitive Visualization Lab Watson Group Mauro Martino PhD mmartino@us.ibm.com Cody Dunne PhD cdunne@us.ibm.com Alan Keahey PhD alan.keahey@us.ibm.com Jamie C. Rasmussen jrasmus@us.ibm.com Steven I. Ross steven_ross@us.ibm.com Kael Greco <tbd>

GraphTrail can make the same findings as other tools COGNITIVE VISUALIZATION LAB GraphTrail Lab Study GraphTrail can make the same findings as other tools And more! New users can make findings New users understand the exploration history And usually motivation!

Field Study With Archaeologists “How were Iron-Age communities integrated into the political and economic structure of the Roman Empire?” “How were urban social hierarchies within the Roman provinces structured and articulated?” Six archaeologists Three months Network of artifacts ~200 archaeological sites in S. Spain 24 node types, 35 edge types ~13,000 nodes, ~19,000 edges Brughmans, T., et al., 2011

. . . COGNITIVE VISUALIZATION LAB GraphTrail Field Study – Current Practice . . . Arduous, halting exploration in Cytoscape Network slices Difficulty with many node & edge types Separate sliced visualizations Large number of files Collaborative analysis sessions Difficult to pursue hypotheses Analysis postponed to generate slices http://www.flickr.com/photos/36495760@N04/3950955138/ One-mode network of the period 150-125 BC, representing sites connected to sites which have evidence of the same pottery forms (co-presence). The line value indicates the number of pottery forms that are co-present.

COGNITIVE VISUALIZATION LAB GraphTrail Field Study – Analyses Every person on team could use, even those less familiar with database or analysis 5 hours first meeting Used for three months Quick & systematic exploration New discoveries and error detection: Two uncommon types of ceramics in Iberian sites -- data error. Group as one entity Serendipitous discovery: “... noticed that some forms [of ceramics] were only found in distinct groups of sites, and that these sites had no other ceramic forms in their assemblages.” Asked one archaeologist to explain an analysis Extensive use of spatial organization Exposition triggered questions & pushed further

Number of nodes, edges, types COGNITIVE VISUALIZATION LAB GraphTrail Scalability Number of nodes, edges, types Number of charts 20 – 30 per session Nodes Types Edges CHI 10K 3 20K 3+ Archaeology 13K 24 35 Benefits of exposing exploration history Inspired exploration Recall findings and exact process Interpret explorations of others with visual history feedback Annotations not needed for “how”, or even “why” Scalability (Canvas) Layout management cost for large explorations Did not limit users in practice Organization tightly coupled with exploration Sessions of 20-30 charts, with one file per task Ways to manage Collapsible branches Semantic or continuously variable zoom Prune to only show key results Reuse charts and propagate changes Scalability (Network) Simplify nodes & edges by aggregating attributes Explore node & edge types with pivoting