Information Design and Visualization

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Information Design and Visualization

• Chris North
• CS 3724 HCI

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To do

• Hall of Fame/Shame Presentations
• Project Requirements Analysis

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ANALYZE
claims about current practice
analysis of stakeholders, field studies
Problem scenarios
DESIGN
Activity scenarios
iterative analysis of usability claims
and re-design
metaphors, information technology, HCI
theory, guidelines
Functionality
Information scenarios
Look and feel
Interaction scenarios
PROTOTYPE EVALUATE
summative evaluation
formative evaluation
Usability specifications
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The Problem
Data
Human
Data Transfer
Goal Insight How?
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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!

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Find the Red Square
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(No Transcript)
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• Which state has highest Income?
• Relationship between Income and Education?
• Outliers?

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College Degree
Per Capita Income
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Scenarios Data Tasks

• Data categories
• Spatial (1,2,3D)
• Tabular (Multi-dimensional)
• Network, Tree
• Text, documents
• Combinations of categories

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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!
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Examples of Tabular data visualization

• DataMaps
• Spotfire
• TableLens

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DataMaps

• demo

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Spotfire

• Mapping data to graphics (x, y, size, color,
  shape)
• Multiple views brushing and linking
• Dynamic Queries
• Details window

Cars data
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Visual Mapping Step 1

• Map data items ? visual marks
• Visual marks
• Points
• Lines
• Areas
• Volumes
• Glyphs

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Visual Mapping Step 2

• Map data items ? visual marks
• Map data attributes ? visual properties of marks
• Visual properties of marks
• Position, x, y, z
• Size, length, area, volume
• Orientation, angle, slope
• Color, gray scale, texture
• Shape
• Animation, time, blink, motion

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Mapping Example in Spotfire

• Film database
• Film ? dot
• Year ? x
• Length ? y
• Popularity ? size
• Subject ? color
• Award? ? shape

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TableLens (Eureka by Inxight)

• Visual encoding of cell values
• Details expand within context (fisheye)
• Sorting

Cars data
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Examples of Tree data visualization

• Windows Explorer
• Star Tree
• TreeMaps

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Star Tree (Hyperbolic Tree)

• FocusContext
• Radial shrink with distance to center
• Drag to navigate
• Scalability?
• Xerox PARC, Inxight
• http//startree.inxight.com/

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Treemaps

• Parent/child containment
• Size color encoding
• Map of the Market http//www.smartmoney.com/mar
  ketmap/
• People Map http//www.truepeers.com/
• Coffee Map http//www.peets.com/tast/11/coffee_s
  elector.asp
• U. Maryland

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• Squarified TreeMap
• http//www.research.microsoft.com/masmith/all_map
  .jpg

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SequoiaView

• http//www.win.tue.nl/sequoiaview/

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(No Transcript)
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Context is Important!
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Information Visualization Mantra

• Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on
  demand
• Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on
  demand
• Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on
  demand
• Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on
  demand
• Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on
  demand
• Overview first, zoom and filter, then details on
  demand

- Ben Shneiderman
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What is Information Visualization?

• The use of computer-supported, interactive,
  visual representations of abstract data to
  amplify cognition

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My definition

• Show me the data!

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Keys points

• Power of visual system
• scenario data tasks
• Mapping data to graphics visual properties
• 2 steps
• Interaction for what doesnt fit in visual rep.
• Dynamic queries, brushing,
• Examples tabular data, trees
• Mantra Overview first
• Choice of visual representation matters

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Whats the Big Deal?
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- Edward Tufte

• Presentation is everything!

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Project Step 3 Design

• Due 3 weeks get started early!
• Design space
• Dimensions of the design space
• Alternative designs
• Claims analysis
• Formative evaluation
• Wizard of Oz
• Refinements
• Final design
• Scenarios
• Representations

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Homework 3

• Due next Thurs
• Download KidPad software
• Design a zoomable visualization