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Information Visualization

Abstract

After representing data in images (‘Representation’ – Chap. 3) it must be laid out in space (i.e., on a display) and in time. Guidance is provided by considering the characteristics of the human visual system, and concepts supportive of design in space and time are introduced and extensively illustrated.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Performance rose to 97 % under unlimited viewing conditions.

  2. 2.

    The description of the human visual processing system given here is necessarily a gross simplification of current understanding (see, for example, Findlay and Gilchrist <CitationRef CitationID="CR12” >2003</Citation Ref>), but is nevertheless adequate and useful for the interaction designer.

  3. 3.

    Readers of a certain age might recall the card-based Rolodex, and observe the features it shares with Coverflow.

  4. 4.

    Historically the first application of the Degree of Interest concept was to enhance the understanding of part of a computer program and make better use of display space. Computation of a Degree of Interest for each line of a program relevant to one of particular interest to the programmer results, by the omission of lines momentarily irrelevant, in a more compact display of information which is highly relevant to the programmer. The result is known as a Fisheye display.

  5. 5.

    For a comprehensive account of the Bifocal display, including many illustrative video clips, go to interaction-design.org and select ‘Encyclopedia’.

  6. 6.

    See for example, the Neighbourhood Explorer (Apperley et al. <CitationRef CitationID="CR3” >2000</Citation Ref>), the Flip Zoom technique (Holmquist <CitationRef CitationID="CR17” >1997</Citation Ref>), the Mackintosh OSX ‘dock’ (Spence <CitationRef CitationID="CR40” >2007</Citation Ref>) and the Perspective Wall (Mackinlay et al. <CitationRef CitationID="CR29” >1991</Citation Ref>). The Hyperbolic Browser (Lamping et al. <CitationRef CitationID="CR27” >1995</Citation Ref>; Lamping and Rao <CitationRef CitationID="CR25” >1994</Citation Ref>, <CitationRef CitationID="CR26” >1996</Citation Ref>) discussed in Chap. 3 is another example of the application of distortion. A comprehensive treatment of the Bifocal Display, together with commentaries by Stuart Card and Lars Erik Holmquist, can be found at interaction-design.org under the heading of ‘Encyclopedia’. Many video clips illustrating the bifocal principle are available on the DVD accompanying Spence (<CitationRef CitationID="CR40” >2007</Citation Ref>) and are available on the following website: http://extras.springer.com

  7. 7.

    If it’s a Mondrian you’re looking for you might be able to riffle faster!

  8. 8.

    Recently, Potter et al. (<CitationRef CitationID="CR36” >2014</Citation Ref>) conducted an experiment in which each image in a collection of 6 or 12 was visible for only 13 ms and with no interval between them, and participants had to detect a picture specified by a name (e.g., smiling couple) that was given either just before or just after the sequence. Successful identification occurred for even those small display periods.

  9. 9.

    The importance of preattentive processing is reflected in Ware’s (<CitationRef CitationID="CR50” >2004</Citation Ref>) comment that “an understanding of what is processed pre-attentively is probably the most important contribution that vision science can make to data visualization”.

  10. 10.

    RSVP is not limited to images. Some very interesting studies have been carried out with the RSVP of text, primarily with a view to speeding up reading and its associated comprehension (see, for example, Rubin and Turano <CitationRef CitationID="CR39” >1992</Citation Ref>.

  11. 11.

    For a more comprehensive discussion, and especially an introduction to Conceptual Short-term Memory (CSTM) see Potter (<CitationRef CitationID="CR33” >1999</Citation Ref>).

  12. 12.

    For a wide range of RSVP applications see chapter 1 of Spence and Witkowski <CitationRef CitationID="CR42” >2013</Citation Ref>.

  13. 13.

    In my lectures I introduce floating mode by the sequence: (1) walking around a department store to view products, (2) using an airport-style buggy to speed things up or, even better, (3) stand still and arrange for the contents of the department store to move past you.

  14. 14.

    More, together with an in depth discussion of RSVP, can be found in Spence and Witkowski <CitationRef CitationID="CR42” >2013</Citation Ref>.

  15. 15.

    If you wish to experience Attentional Blink access the website http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MH6ZSfhdIuM

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Robert Spence

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  1. Robert Spence
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Exercises

Exercises

4.1.1 Exercise 4.1

For each of the following approaches to presentation write one sentence summarizing its essential features: (1) scrolling, (2) overview plus detail, (3) distortion, (4) degree of interest and (5) semantic zoom.

4.1.2 Exercise 4.2

Your hand-held tablet is fitted with a GPS facility and therefore ‘knows where it is’. Sketch a design for a street map, with street names, which will draw a user’s attention to, and suggest the approximate location of, places of interest (e.g., restaurants, petrol stations) over an area equal to nine times the area covered by the tablet’s display.

4.1.3 Exercise 4.3

Explore the potential offered by the distortion principle for a person using a hand-held device to send text messages to additionally be aware of other items of interest such as text messages and recorded calls. Show how colour and position and any other encoding mechanism can be used to advantage. Justify the minimum size of icon in the distorted region.

4.1.4 Exercise 4.4

Identify a city of modest size that tourists or professionals may have to visit (e.g., Seattle, Oslo, Eindhoven, York). The local Visitor’ Bureau wishes to make available, for travel and sightseeing planning, a printed representation of local transport and places of interest as well as major transportation links to destinations up to 50–200 miles away. Sketch a possible design.

4.1.5 Exercise 4.5

Figure 4.73 illustrates one approach to Exercise 4.4. The visitor is provided with the means to construct a ‘Visitor’s Cube’ in which one face provides local detail of a city and the others provide context. Decide how continuity can be achieved along the edges of such a construction and complete the design for the city you selected in Exercise 4.4. Critique your design.

Fig. 4.73
figure 73

A suggested design in response to Exercise 4.4 (Courtesy Maurits Kaptein)

Full size image

4.1.6 Exercise 4.6

Propose a design for a facility suited to a hand-held tablet that will enable a user to review up to 500 photographs with a view to selecting one to show to a friend.

4.1.7 Exercise 4.7

A particular treemap is so extensive that it cannot usefully be presented in its totality on the display of a hand-held tablet. Suggest how an interactive presentation might be designed to allow easy comprehension of the treemap.

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Spence, R. (2014). Presentation. In: Information Visualization. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07341-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07341-5_4

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  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-07341-5

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