Stephen North

1
Stephen North Information Visualization
Research ATT Information and Software Laboratory
9 October 2004
2

• Graphviz
• open source
• concrete diagrams, tools
• 15 years of research
• 5 layout programs
• 5 user interface platforms
• 100s of applications
• 100K Google refs

3

• For software to be re-usable,it must be usable.
• features
• scalable
• robust
• portable
• documented
• maintained
• legal
• Are you willing to pay the cost?

4

• Many tall buildings were already built
• the web
• user interface libraries and tools
• database systems
• statistical software
• GIS systems
• scientific visualization tools
• document preparation tools
• multimedia tools

An Infovis infrastructure should complement,
not attempt to subsume these systems.
5

• visualization techniques, algorithms
• foundation components, services
• platforms
• applications, products

fundamental and applied research
engineering research
6

• APIs can be overrated.
• data is the new code
• core semantics
• valuable
• proprietary
• persistent