Natural Visualization

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Natural Visualization

• Steve Haroz Kwan-Liu Ma
• University of California at Davis

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Outline

• Purpose
• Math Background
• Applying and extending existing theories
• InfoVis Contest
• Application to GUIs
• Summary and Conclusion

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Outline

• Purpose
• Math Background
• Applying and extending existing theories
• InfoVis Contest
• Application to GUIs
• Summary and Conclusion

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Purpose

• What makes for a good Visualization?
• Aesthetics?
• Color?
• Complexity?
• Beginner or Expert? Intuitive?
• Can understanding the process of visualization
  help?

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The Process
0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1
Visualization
Complete?
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Which Representation Is Best?
Who can prove by experience the non-existence of
a cause when all that experience tells us is that
we do not perceive it?
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The Process
0 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 1
Visualization
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The Forgotten Stage of Visualization
Hubel 1988
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Purpose

• Applicability of visual system knowledge
• Retina tuned to natural images
• Certain images more easily perceptible?
• Is interaction aided by these natural GUIs ?

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Outline

• Purpose
• Math Background
• Applying and extending existing theories
• InfoVis Contest
• Application to GUIs
• Summary and Conclusion

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Spatial Frequencies

• Similar to auditory frequencies
• Varying intensity (light) over space

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Fourier Transform

• Sum of sin/cos waves

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Spatial Frequencies of Natural Images

• Take Fourier transform along each orientation and
  average
• f -2 pattern
• Pattern is prevalent in all natural scenes
• Plot on log-log scale

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Unnatural images
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Natural Images
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Size Distribution

• This pattern is explained by
• a collage of objects occluding each other
• These objects have a power distribution
• area 2x

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Outline

• Purpose
• Math Background
• Applying and extending existing theories
• InfoVis Contest
• Application to GUIs
• Summary and Conclusion

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exponential
power
constant
linear
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Plot of spatial frequencies
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Linear Trend
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Images Without Occlusion

• You cant visualize what is not visible
• Images with adjacent squares
• Same sizing applies

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exponential
power
constant
linear
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Trend no occlusion
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Outline

• Purpose
• Math Background
• Applying and extending existing theories
• InfoVis Contest
• Application to GUIs
• Summary and Conclusion

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Naturalness Metric

• Closeness to f-2
• Linearity

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InfoVis 2004 Contest
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InfoVis 2005 Contest
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Outline

• Purpose
• Math Background
• Applying and extending existing theories
• InfoVis Contest
• Application to GUIs
• Summary and Conclusion

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Image Analysis for GUI Study

• Applications with hierarchical data
• Analyze screenshots
• Compare with usage data (user study)
• Use statistics to find behavioral patterns

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Correlation with Response Time
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Outline

• Purpose
• Math Background
• Applying and extending existing theories
• InfoVis Contest
• Application to GUIs
• Summary and Conclusion

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Summary and Conclusion

• Visualization preference correlates with a
  property of the visual system
• Bias-free metric may help vis generation
• Utility or aesthetics?
• More visual properties

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Acknowledgements

• Bruno Olshausen
• Yue Wang