Information Visualization Applications and Implications Ming Bi 05/22/2001 When there is no vision, the people perish

Information Visualization  Definition of Information visualization  Information visualization is the use of computer supported interactive visual representation of abstract data to amplify cognition  Goals  Discovery  Decision making  Explanation

Information Visualization  Mantra for Designers  Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand  Other tasks need to be supported  Extraction of objects for further examination or consultation with others  History keeping to record the user’s actions and results

List of Applications  Statistical and Categorical Data  Digital Libraries  Personal Services  Complex Documents  Histories  Classifications  Networks

Statistical and Categorical Data  Census, health, labor, economic, and other demographic data  Stocks, bonds, bank accounts, currency trading  Sales by region, product, salesperson, customer  Manufacturing process supervision  Drug, chemical, material attributes

Statistical and Categorical Data  Information visualization provides significant advantages that complement spreadsheets, statistical packages and data mining tools  Table, Scatterplots, Parallel coordinates  Users seek to discover specific objects that best match their requirements  Users seek to discover understand patterns

Statistical and Categorical Data

Digital Library  Books, films,videos, photos, maps,manuscripts, audio recordings  Patents, scientific journal articles, legal citations and statutes  Newspaper and magazine articles  Scientific and social science data sets  World Wide Web pages

Digital Library  Query preview indicate the cardinality of the result set  Mapping multidimensional document space into 2D or 3D  Previews are nicely complemented by overviews that are constructed by representing each object in the collection in a 2D display  similar items may or may not be closed to each other

Personal Services  Travel info on airlines, trains,hotels,restaurants  Classified ads for home, real estate, jobs  Consumer comparisons of cars, TVs  Sports statistics  Entertainment events  Challenge:  Complex criteria  Flexible search strategies and easy relaxation of queries

Complex Documents  Biography, resume, annual report  Book, film, video, manuscript, audio recording  Patent, scientific article, treaty, contract  Software module, data structure  tasks are varied: previews, key words search, content compare

Histories  Exploration of temporal data  Medical patient histories  Student, sales client, legal case, employment histories  Economic trends, stocks  Project management, Gantt charts, PERT-CPM

Classifications  Classification using hierarchies to help organize complex information and reduce the amount of information people need to cope with at any time  Library subject headings, animal species, patent listings  Tables of contents, organization chart, family trees Tree structures  hard disk data directories node-link diagram, cone trees, tree maps using space-filling, hyperbolic trees, CHEOPS  Budgets, sales

Classifications  Classifications vary greatly in size and complexity  Flexible visualization tools are needed and task must deal with:  Topology  Nodes with names  Node with names and attributes

Networks  Network is necessary because tree is inadequate to capture all relationships among objects.  Telecommunications connections and usage  Highways, pipelines, electronic circuits  Scientific articles or legal citations  Social structures, organizational relationships  World Wide Web  Challenge: elaborate topology, Large number of nodes, complexity of the tasks

Limitation and Cautions  Limitation: Only for sighted people  Sonification or audiolization  Cautions:  Many users may not be visual oriented  People may misuse it and come to wrong conclusions  Incompatible formats for data, nonstandard widgets and inconsistent terminology--can be overcome

Implications  Information visualization will be popular tools for most computer users  Personal services are likely to be the largest area of commercial applications  The most likely profession for substantial change is medicine  Provide more thorough and appropriate sets of precedents and statute for legal research

Implications  Financial analysts use dynamical of screen for more visual display and dynamical query to help filter out unwanted data  Scientific users become more sophisticated in their approach to research  Information visualization tools will be components of other application software like word processor

Two-vs. Three-Dimensional Presentations  Advantages of 2D presentations  2D screen  visual perception based on seeing 2D projection of 3D world  user are familiar with paper presentation  2D presentations are faster on computer  2D presentation are simpler  tree structure more useful in 2D versions

Two-vs. Three-Dimensional Presentations  Advantages of 3D presentations  3D real world and experience based on movement in 3D  development of hardware/software will overcome the technology difficult for 3D  3D pointing devices and better control widget will enable smooth navigation without disorientation  more information can be displayed on the screen  network data structure more effective in 3D versions  Compromiser: there is room for both

Two-vs. Three-Dimensional Presentations  Proposed 3D applications  Immersive Virtual Environment  Semi-immersive Virtual Environment  Desktop 3D for 3D worlds  Desktop 3D for artificial worlds  Desktop 3D for novel information spaces  Chartjunk 3D

Overview+Detail vs. Focus+Context  Overview+Detail strategy  Integrate overview and details is cognitively for some viewers  zoom factor-- the ratio of length of the diagonal in the detail view to the length of the diagonal in the field view box: 5-15  support zoom factors of 100 or 1000 when applied repeatedly  Focus+context  Fisheye views, Bifocal lens: Greater potential for disorientation  zoom factor-- the ratio of an object’s diagonal in the focus area to the object’s diagonal in the context area: 2-5

Reengineering the Desktop  Room strategy--workspace or virtual desktop  Elastic Windows  3D worlds--Webbook  Personal Role Management strategy Coping with Multiple-valued attributes  represented as multiple items on a display Understanding Human perception

Conclusion

 Information Visualization is part of new media  brings increased resources to the human in the form of perceptual processing and expanded working memeory  reduce the search for information  enhance the recognition of patterns  enables the use of perceptual inference and perceptual monitoring  itself is manipulable and interactive

Future Trends  Entering the mainstream  Moving towards applications  Integrated packages  Networks  Educational Infrastructure

Unsolved problems  New metaphors/new visualizations  Bringing science to the craft  The visualization of cyberspace  Collaborative visualization  A characterization of Information visualization down to the operator level  The perceptual analysis of dynamic information display  Advances in the science of dynamic spatial cognition  A theory of knowledge crystallization