Animation CS 4390/5390 Data Visualization Shirley Moore, Instructor November 26,

Animation for Visualization Reference: “Animation for Visualization: Opportunties and Drawbacks”, by Danyel Fisher, Microsoft, April 2010 Other references – us/people/danyelf/publications.aspx us/people/danyelf/publications.aspx 2

Motivation Show intermediate stages and transitions Show how data change over time Scale to large amounts of data by showing only a portion at a time Direct observer’s attention to important points Enhance visual appeal 3

Drawbacks Can be very bad when used poorly Can make data exploration more difficult and slower Studies show accuracy of perception is lower than with static images Easy to overload observer with too many changes taking place simultaneously May cause viewers to ascribe agency and causality where none exists 4

Principles of Animation Show viewers a series of images with the goal that they can build a concurrent idea of what is happening Viewers can trace changes mentally only when there are a small number of changes – Studies have shown viewers have trouble tracking more than 4 to 5 objects simultaneously Gestalt principle of common fate – Viewers will group large numbers of objects together if they are traveling in the same direction at the same speed. 5

Examples of Success Animation Scientific visualization – Representation of dynamic processes – R 4 domain: 3 spatial dimensions + time dimension – ParaView animation Hans Rosling’s GapMinder – Microsoft study of animated scatterplots showed animation only works with a small number of changes and is not effective as effective as multiple static plots for data exploration. In general, animation works better for presentation rather than exploration. 6

Exploration vs. Presentation Exploration – Users need to be able to go backwards and forwards in time – End of replaying animation dozens of times – Looking for trends and outliers Presentation – Animation helps viewers follow points presenter is making. – Presenter has worked through the data and knows the answers. – Presenter narrates transtitions to provide clarity. – Showing trends 7

Animation Examples Pedro Cruz – empires-decline/ empires-decline/ – New York Times – hot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your- politics.html?abt=0002&abg=0 hot/how-the-year-you-were-born-influences-your- politics.html?abt=0002&abg=0 – apping-the-spread-of-drought-across-the- us.html?abt=0002&abg=0 apping-the-spread-of-drought-across-the- us.html?abt=0002&abg=0 8

Wind Animation xamples/winds/ xamples/winds/ 9

More Examples ht9LXI&feature=youtube_gdata_player ht9LXI&feature=youtube_gdata_player ews/solarstorm3D_briefing_prt.htm ews/solarstorm3D_briefing_prt.htm mobile-calls-visualized-animation/ mobile-calls-visualized-animation/ animated-simple-data-made-spectacular/ animated-simple-data-made-spectacular/ 10

Possible Project Animation of large-scale message-passing data – Research question: how to support exploration 11