Information Visualization Chris North cs3724: HCI

Presentations terrence witt Vote: UI Hall of Fame/Shame?

Homework1 results Avg: ~76 User and Task analysis? HCI metrics? principles? “Learning time is good” “Learning time is good because users have knowledge X and we know that because of Z”

Quiz Some principles for layout design: fitts law: distance, size Start top left, left to right, top to bottom Avoid scroll bars at all cost!!! …

discussion “What about my mom…?”

What is Information Visualization? The use of computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition

The Big Problem How? contacts, dict/thes, music, news, email, web Books, papers, scientific data, VB ref Human Data Data Transfer How? vision: 90Mb/sec Hear: 10/s, 44k/s Smell: 1 Touch: Taste Neural link: huge esp

Human Vision Highest bandwidth sense Fast, parallel Pattern recognition Pre-attentive Extends memory and cognitive capacity (Multiplication test) People think visually Impressive. Lets use it!

Find the Red Square: The pop-out effect

Which state has highest Income? Relationship between Income and Education? Outliers?

College Degree % Per Capita Income

Visual Representation Matters! Text vs. Graphics What if you could only see 1 state’s data at a time? (e.g. Census Bureau’s website) What if I read the data to you?

The Big Problem Human Data Data Transfer How?

The Bigger Problem Data Human Data Transfer How?

Interactive Graphics Homefinder

forms Avoid the temptation to design a form-based search engine More tasks than just “search” How do I know what to “search” for? What if there’s something better that I don’t know to search for? Hides the data

Visualization can do this! User Tasks Excel can do this Easy stuff: Min, max, average, % These only involve 1 data item or value Hard stuff: Patterns, trends, distributions, changes over time, outliers, exceptions, relationships, correlations, multi-way, combined min/max, tradeoffs, clusters, groups, comparisons, context, anomalies, data errors, Paths, … Visualization can do this!

More than just “data transfer” Glean higher level knowledge from the data Hides data Hides “information” Nothing learned Zero insight Reveals data Reveals information about data that is not necessarily “stored” in the data Learn = data  information Insight!

More than just “data transfer” Glean higher level knowledge from the data The Insight Factor Hides data Hides “information” Nothing learned Zero insight Reveals data Reveals information about data that is not necessarily “stored” in the data Learn = data  information Insight!

Class Motto Show me the data!

What’s the Big Deal?

Presentation is everything!

My Philosophy: Optimization Computer Serial Symbolic Static Deterministic Exact Binary, 0/1 Computation Programmed Follow instructions Amoral Human Parallel Visual Dynamic Non-deterministic Fuzzy Gestalt, whole, patterns Understanding Free will Creative Moral Visualization = the best of both Impressive computation + impressive cognition

Homework #2: Info. Vis. Tools Get some data: Tabular, >=5 attributes (columns), >=500 items (rows) Use 2 visualization tools + Excel: Spotfire, TableLens, Parallel Coordinates Mcbryde 104c 2 page report: Discoveries in data Comparison of tools Due: Feb 19: A-K Feb 21: L-Z

Project 2: Java 3 students per team Ambitious project 0: form team (feb 14) 1: design (feb 28) 2: initial implementation (mid march) 3: final implementation (end march)

February Feb 14: Project 2, java: teams due Feb 19,21: Homework #2, info vis Feb 26: midterm Feb 28: Project 2, java: design due 2 tracks: Infovis, design, eval Java

Next Project 1 due now Presentations: proj1 design Next Tues: jerome holman, john gibson Next Thurs: john randal, tom shultz