InfoZoom Software presenter Andrew Trieu ICS Information Visualization Department ICS at UCI April 18, 2002

InfoZoom zInfoZoom is a unique tool to pinpoint and analyze information for decision-making. zInfoZoom’s complementary views on your data let you discover patterns and relationships in context that can you can grasp and analyze via mouse click. zInfoZoom lets you distill knowledge from data. zSources can be tables in plain ASCII format or any ODBC-capable database.

InfoZoom (con’t) zInfoZoom lets you create and edit project and present Infoscapes

z‘Infoscape’ is the author’s term for a new type of interactive communication media. zAn Infoscape is a projection without “natural” limitations to your ability to rearrange items very swiftly while you interact with it. And that is where focussing in on Objects in an Infoscape is really much more powerful than zooming in on a landscape.

Example of Infoscapes zSuppose you want to see a cathedral on the extreme right of your landscape & a castle on the extreme left side by side in order to compare architectural details, no zoom lens in the world will do that for you. But in an Infoscape, you can easily display two initially remote items side by side to compare them in details: InfoZoom will do that for you at the click of a button.

Infoscapes Group of Functions zUsing InfoZoom and working with Infoscapes involves three groups of functions: Editing the Infoscape Controlling the projection Documenting and presenting results

Editing an Infoscape zEditing an Infoscape is essentially a two-step process: in the first step you modify the information set held in the RAM of your PC. in a second, independent step you may save the modifications in a file on disk. zNote: in some cases, you can not perform the second step because of file format. However, you can always modify the information set in RAM, which is essential for all sophisticated analyses.

File Format zInfoZoom reads and writes files in a number of formats: Proprietary file formatextension.fox Read-only file formatextension.fop Chart file formatextension.chf InfoZoom text file formatextension.foc Import file formatextension.txt Import file formatextension.csv

Controlling the Projection zControlling the projection that creates a new Infoscape is at the heart of using InfoZoom and working with Infoscape. It involves four groups of functions: Focussing in on Attributes, i.e. bringing close together on your screen those Attributes rows that are relevant for the analyses at hand; Choosing the most appropriate among the three views that the Infoscape can be displayed in;

Controlling the Projection (con’t) Focussing in on Objects, i.e. displaying those (and only those) Objects that satisfy your criteria, and showing those details of Attribute values that you really need to know; Sorting the Objects (columns) of an Infoscape by their values of an Attribute;

Focussing in on Attributes zcan be achieved by a combination of: Moving Attribute rows, regrouping Attributes hierarchically, Hiding manually selected Attributes, Automatically hiding Attributes that do not help to further focus in on Objects.

Choosing the appropriate view zThe Overview is the most compact projection. Each Attribute row is displayed like a horizontal stack of bars in a bar chart fitted to the width of the Infoscape window. Attribute values are sorted and combined in bars of identical values. Multi-value bars can represent similar Attribute values; zThe Compressed Table view preserves the association of Attribute values to Objects. Objects are presented as columns in the table. zThe Wide Table view, which may extend horizontally beyond the Infoscape window, so you may have to scroll to inspect all Object columns.

Overview view

Compressed Table view

Wide Table view

Focussing in on Objects zYou focus in on Objects by creating a new Infoscape (a new projection) that: eliminates all Objects with the selected or the non- selected Attribute values, sorts Objects in ascending or descending order of their Attribute values and groups together all Objects with identical values of a selected Attribute, magnifies all or selected columns or bars, displaying Attribute values that had been “hidden” in multi- object cells or multi-value bars.

Documenting & presenting results zInfoZoom lets you print the Infoscape on any printer installed on your system and helps you to keep the printed pages “organized” zThe Print Preview function les you resize an Infoscape in Overview or Compressed Table view so it fits nicely on the printed page. zInfoZoom lets you create elaborate business graphics from your selection of the Infoscape data. Include these charts in your screen presentation or your printed report.