Visualization Leslie Wu Loren Yu

Is this a good visualization? http://tinyurl.com/6rr22g

What is visualization? Definition: The use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of data to amplify cognition Situations / Tasks / Users (STUs)

Creating good visualizations “I wonder if people [build upwards from ‘building blocks’] to create the next best visualization, [or if theory comes after the visualization] to justify why the visualization is a good one?” - Marcia Lee Sequential Process Iterative Process “[A]head of time, one must know what the “major” variables are and perhaps ask oneself several questions that a viewer would want to know…” - Neema Moraveji “Ideally, thinking-through-visualizing should lead to discoveries that feed-back towards earlier steps as much as they feed-forward”, and not be a “‘waterfall’ sequence that only has iteration within each step” - Mike Krieger

What tasks do visualizations support? Use whiteboard to fill people’s responses Our own ideas: Analysis and cognition Art and aesthetics Advertising Inspire/Incite/Instigate Communication Ad hoc Ambient

Visualization Tasks

Cost Structure Different visual representations have different cost structures. Some visual characteristics are “automatically” recognized, while others require conscious effort to interpret

Cost Structure?

How does visualization amplify cognition? Increasing available memory and processing resources Reducing search costs Visual detection of patterns Perceptual inference operations Perceptual attention for monitoring Encoding information

Consequences of Visualization “[W]hen do you use visuals and when do you just show a table?" - Neil Patel Easier is not necessarily better “[R]etention occurs alongside some amount of expended effort… [I]f I have to spend less effort thinking about something, I'm less likely to remember it” - Neema Moraveji “I wonder if the ease of representing information in a particular form colors how we approach it… If we continually see tables used to organize information, do we become less receptive to the data it models?" - Amal Aziz

Visualizations for whom? A. In which domains would visualization be most useful? "I would also be interested to read some discussion of professions or domains that could really benefit from increased work in the area of information visualization.  Who uses a vast amount of complex data that presents a visualization challenge?" - Sara Mitchell B. How does visualization fit into societal organizations? "Where does visualization fit into to large systems of human minds working together?" - Nick Wolfe

Visualization in the Future Different Domains: Scientific Visualization vs. Information Visualization Visualization for the Masses Mobilization/Miniaturization of visualization “[I]t would be nice to explore the different possibilities of [mobile] devices. How much context can be used…? - Nick Briggs Automatically generating visualizations based on user models "it would be neat to see a system that models user behavior… [to generate visualizations] that would respond well to human senses and perception..." – Michael Smith

Collaborative InfoViz and Social Cognition Many Eyes comments: http://services.alphaworks.ibm.com/manyeyes/browse/comments Hans Rosling: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/92