Information visualization

Graphic representation of a minute fraction of the WWW, demonstrating hyperlinks

Information visualization is the interdisciplinary study of "the visual representation of large-scale collections of non-numerical information, such as files and lines of code in software systems, library and bibliographic databases, networks of relations on the internet, and so forth".^[1]

Overview

Partial map of the Internet early 2005, each line represents two IP addresses, and some delay between those two, nodes.

The field of information visualization has emerged "from research in human-computer interaction, computer science, graphics, visual design, psychology, and business methods. It is increasingly applied as a critical component in scientific research, digital libraries, data mining, financial data analysis, market studies, manufacturing production control, and drug discovery".^[2]

Information visualization presumes that "visual representations and interaction techniques take advantage of the human eye’s broad bandwidth pathway into the mind to allow users to see, explore, and understand large amounts of information at once. Information visualization focused on the creation of approaches for conveying abstract information in intuitive ways."^[3]

History

The modern study of visualization started with computer graphics, which "has from its beginning been used to study scientific problems. However, in its early days the lack of graphics power often limited its usefulness. The recent emphasis on visualization started in 1987 with the special issue of Computer Graphics on Visualization in Scientific Computing. Since then there have been several conferences and workshops, co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and ACM SIGGRAPH".^[4] They have been devoted to the general topics of data visualisation, information visualization and scientific visualisation, and more specific areas such as volume visualization.

Specific methods and techniques

The Solid Software Xplorer (SolidSX) is a software application that gives insight in large (software) systems.

• Cladogram (phylogeny)
• Dendrogram (classification)
• Information visualization reference model
• Graph drawing
• Heatmap
• HyperbolicTree
• Multidimensional scaling
• Problem Solving Environment
• Treemapping
• Southbeach Notation

Applications

Information visualization insights are being applied in areas such as:^[2]

• scientific research,
• digital libraries,
• data mining,
• financial data analysis, market studies,
• manufacturing production control,
• and crime mapping.

And also:

• Command Post of the Future
• Informedia Digital Library
• Information graphics
• Starlight Information Visualization System

Experts

Stuart K. Card

Stuart K. Card is an American researcher. He is a Senior Research Fellow at Xerox PARC and one of the pioneers of applying human factors in human–computer interaction. The 1983 book The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction, which he co-wrote with Thomas P. Moran and Allen Newell, became a very influential book in the field, partly for introducing the Goals, Operators, Methods, and Selection rules (GOMS) framework. His currently research is in the field of developing a supporting science of human–information interaction and visual-semantic prototypes to aid sensemaking.^[5]

George W. Furnas

George Furnas is a professor and Associate Dean for Academic Strategy at the School of Information of the University of Michigan. Furnas has also worked with Bell Labs where he earned the moniker "Fisheye Furnas" while working with fisheye visualizations. He is a pioneer of Latent semantic analysis, Professor Furnas is also considered a pioneer in the concept of Mosaic of Responsive Adaptive Systems (MoRAS).

James D. Hollan

James D. Hollan directs the Distributed Cognition and Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory at University of California, San Diego. His research explores the cognitive consequences of computationally based media. The goal is to understand the cognitive and computational characteristics of dynamic interactive representations as the basis for effective system design. His current work focuses on cognitive ethnography, computer-mediated communication, distributed cognition, human-computer interaction, information visualization, multiscale software, and tools for analysis of video data.

Martin Wattenberg

Martin Wattenberg is known for pioneering work in artistic and social data visualization. With Fernanda Viegas he leads Google's data visualization research group; he and Viegas created the field of Social data analysis and were the creators of "Many Eyes," the first cloud-based visualization service, and History Flow, a tool for visualizing Wikipedia edits. His artwork has been shown at museums worldwide, and helped establish visualization as an artistic practice.^[6][7][8]

More related scientists

• George G. Robertson
• Pierre Rosenstiehl
• Ben Shneiderman
• John Stasko

Organization

Organizations

• International Symposium on Graph Drawing
• Panopticon Software
• University of Maryland Human-Computer Interaction Lab
• Vvi
• Macrofocus
• Mapjects Software

See also

• Computational visualistics
• Data Presentation Architecture
• Data visualization
• Geovisualization
• Infographics
• Infonomics
• Patent visualisation
• Visual analytics
• Web mapping

References

Further reading

• Benjamin B. Bederson and Ben Shneiderman (2003). The Craft of Information Visualization: Readings and Reflections. Morgan Kaufmann.
• Stuart K. Card, Jock D.Mackinlay and Ben Shneiderman (1999). Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.
• Jeffrey Heer, Stuart K. Card, James Landay (2005). "Prefuse: a toolkit for interactive information visualization". In: ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 2005.
• Colin Ware (2000). Information Visualization: Perception for design. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
• Andreas Kerren, John T. Stasko, Jean-Daniel Fekete, and Chris North (2008). Information Visualization – Human-Centered Issues and Perspectives. Volume 4950 of LNCS State-of-the-Art Survey, Springer.
• Riccardo Mazza (2009). Introduction to Information Visualization, Springer.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Information visualization

• Information Visualization at the Open Directory Project
• InfoVis:Wiki, a community that collects infoviz techniques, publications and events in wiki format.
• Visual Complexity, unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks