Information Visualization Applications and Implications

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

2. 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

3. 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

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

5. 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

6. 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

7. Statistical and Categorical Data

8. Statistical and Categorical Data

9. 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

10. 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

12. 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

13. 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

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

15. 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

16. 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

17. 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

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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

23. 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

24. 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

25. 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

26. 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

27. 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

28. Conclusion

29. 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

30. Future Trends • Entering the mainstream • Moving towards applications • Integrated packages • Networks • Educational Infrastructure

31. 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