1. Information Visualization (Part 1)
cs3724: HCI

2. The Problem
Data
Human
Data Transfer
Goal: Insight
How?

3. 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!

4. Find the Red Square:

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

7. College Degree %
Per Capita Income

8. Scenarios = Data + Tasks
Data categories:
Spatial (1,2,3D)
Multi-dimensional
Tree
Network
Text, documents

9. Visualization can do this!
User Tasks
Easy stuff: (1 or few items)
Min, max, average, %
Exact queries, known item search
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, …
Excel can do this
Visualization can do this!

10. DataMaps
demo

11. Spotfire Mapping data to graphics (x, y, size, color, shape…)
Multiple views: brushing and linking
Dynamic Queries
Details window
Cars data

12. TableLens (Eureka by Inxight)
Visual encoding of cell values
Details expand within context (fisheye)
Sorting
Cars data

13. Focus+Context Hyperbolic Tree (star tree)
Radial; shrink with distance to center
Drag to navigate
Scalability?
Xerox PARC, Inxight

14. Treemaps on the Web
Map of the Market:
People Map:
Coffee Map:

15. “Squarified” TreeMap

16. SequoiaView
HW #3

18. Context is Important!

19. Information Visualization Mantra
Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on demand

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

21. My definition:
Show me the data!

22. Keys points Power of visual system scenario = data + tasks
Mapping data to graphics & visual properties
Interaction for what doesn’t fit in visual rep.
Examples: multi-dimensional, tree
Mantra: Overview first
Choice of representation matters

23. What’s the Big Deal?

24. Presentation is everything!