Animated transitions in statistical data graphics. (2007)

by J Heer, G Robertson
Venue:URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2007.70539, doi:10.1109/TVCG.2007.70539. JGAA,
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Rolling the Dice: Multidimensional Visual Exploration using Scatterplot Matrix Navigation Visualization

by Niklas Elmqvist, Pierre Dragicevic, Jean-daniel Fekete - Issue 6, Nov.-Dec. 2008 Page(s):1539
"... Abstract—Scatterplots remain one of the most popular and widely-used visual representations for multidimensional data due to their simplicity, familiarity and visual clarity, even if they lack some of the flexibility and visual expressiveness of newer multidimensional visualization techniques. This ..."
Abstract - Cited by 115 (15 self) - Add to MetaCart
Abstract—Scatterplots remain one of the most popular and widely-used visual representations for multidimensional data due to their simplicity, familiarity and visual clarity, even if they lack some of the flexibility and visual expressiveness of newer multidimensional visualization techniques. This paper presents new interactive methods to explore multidimensional data using scatterplots. This exploration is performed using a matrix of scatterplots that gives an overview of the possible configurations, thumbnails of the scatterplots, and support for interactive navigation in the multidimensional space. Transitions between scatterplots are performed as animated rotations in 3D space, somewhat akin to rolling dice. Users can iteratively build queries using bounding volumes in the dataset, sculpting the query from different viewpoints to become more and more refined. Furthermore, the dimensions in the navigation space can be reordered, manually or automatically, to highlight salient correlations and differences among them. An example scenario presents the interaction techniques supporting smooth and effortless visual exploration of multidimensional datasets. Index Terms—Visual exploration, visual queries, visual analytics, navigation, multivariate data, interaction. 1
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Effectiveness of animation in trend visualization

by George Robertson, Danyel Fisher, Bongshin Lee, John Stasko - IEEE Trans. Visualization and Computer Graphics
"... Abstract — Animation has been used to show trends in multi-dimensional data. This technique has recently gained new prominence for presentations, most notably with Gapminder Trendalyzer. In Trendalyzer, animation together with interesting data and an engaging presenter helps the audience understand ..."
Abstract - Cited by 78 (4 self) - Add to MetaCart
Abstract — Animation has been used to show trends in multi-dimensional data. This technique has recently gained new prominence for presentations, most notably with Gapminder Trendalyzer. In Trendalyzer, animation together with interesting data and an engaging presenter helps the audience understand the results of an analysis of the data. It is less clear whether trend animation is effective for analysis. This paper proposes two alternative trend visualizations that use static depictions of trends: one which shows traces of all trends overlaid simultaneously in one display and a second that uses a small multiples display to show the trend traces side-by-side. The paper evaluates the three visualizations for both analysis and presentation. Results indicate that trend animation can be challenging to use even for presentations; while it is the fastest technique for presentation and participants find it enjoyable and exciting, it does lead to many participant errors. Animation is the least effective form for analysis; both static depictions of trends are significantly faster than animation, and the small multiples display is more accurate. Index Terms—Information visualization, animation, trends, design, experiment. 1 INTRODUCTION: TREND
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Narrative Visualization: Telling Stories with Data

by Edward Segel, Jeffrey Heer
"... Abstract—Data visualization is regularly promoted for its ability to reveal stories within data, yet these “data stories ” differ in important ways from traditional forms of storytelling. Storytellers, especially online journalists, have increasingly been integrating visualizations into their narrat ..."
Abstract - Cited by 65 (2 self) - Add to MetaCart
Abstract—Data visualization is regularly promoted for its ability to reveal stories within data, yet these “data stories ” differ in important ways from traditional forms of storytelling. Storytellers, especially online journalists, have increasingly been integrating visualizations into their narratives, in some cases allowing the visualization to function in place of a written story. In this paper, we systematically review the design space of this emerging class of visualizations. Drawing on case studies from news media to visualization research, we identify distinct genres of narrative visualization. We characterize these design differences, together with interactivity and messaging, in terms of the balance between the narrative flow intended by the author (imposed by graphical elements and the interface) and story discovery on the part of the reader (often through interactive exploration). Our framework suggests design strategies for narrative visualization, including promising under-explored approaches to journalistic storytelling and educational media. Index Terms—Narrative visualization, storytelling, design methods, case study, journalism, social data analysis. 1
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Sizing the horizon: The effects of chart size and layering on the graphical perception of time series visualizations

by Jeffrey Heer, Nicholas Kong, Maneesh Agrawala - In Proc. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI , 2009
"... We investigate techniques for visualizing time series data and evaluate their effect in value comparison tasks. We compare line charts with horizon graphs — a space-efficient time series visualization technique — across a range of chart sizes, measuring the speed and accuracy of subjects’ estimates ..."
Abstract - Cited by 64 (5 self) - Add to MetaCart
We investigate techniques for visualizing time series data and evaluate their effect in value comparison tasks. We compare line charts with horizon graphs — a space-efficient time series visualization technique — across a range of chart sizes, measuring the speed and accuracy of subjects’ estimates of value differences between charts. We identify transition points at which reducing the chart height results in significantly differing drops in estimation accuracy across the compared chart types, and we find optimal positions in the speed-accuracy tradeoff curve at which viewers performed quickly without attendant drops in accuracy. Based on these results, we propose approaches for increasing data density that optimize graphical perception. Author Keywords Visualization, graphical perception, time series, line charts,
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CloudLines: Compact Display of Event Episodes in Multiple Time-Series

by Enrico Bertini, Daniel A. Keim - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
"... Fig. 1. CloudLines visualization of key politicians appearing in the news during February 2011. The technique allows detection of visual clusters in a compressed view of multiple time series, enhanced with distortion interaction techniques for individual data item analysis. Abstract—We propose incre ..."
Abstract - Cited by 34 (4 self) - Add to MetaCart
Fig. 1. CloudLines visualization of key politicians appearing in the news during February 2011. The technique allows detection of visual clusters in a compressed view of multiple time series, enhanced with distortion interaction techniques for individual data item analysis. Abstract—We propose incremental time-series visualization technique with interactive distortion as a way to deal with time-based representations of large and dynamic event data sets in limited space. Modern data analysis challenges in the domains of news publishing, network security and financial services require scalable solutions that will help the users to analyze the event data on atomic level while retaining the temporal context. The incremental nature of the data implies that visualizations have to necessarily change their content and still provide comprehensible representations. In this paper, we deal with the need to keep an eye on recent events together with providing a context on the past and making relevant patterns accessible at any scale. Our method adapts to the incoming data by using a decay function to let the items fade away according to their relevance. Since access to details is also important, we also provide a magnifying lens technique which takes into account the distortions introduced by the logarithmic time scale to enhance readability in selected areas of interest. We demonstrate the validity of our techniques by applying them on incremental data coming from online news streams in different time frames.
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Visual clustering in parallel coordinates

by Hong Zhou, Xiaoru Yuan, Huamin Qu, Weiwei Cui, Baoquan Chen - COMPUTER GRAPHICS FORUM , 2008
"... Parallel coordinates have been widely applied to visualize high-dimensional and multivariate data, discerning patterns within the data through visual clustering. However, the effectiveness of this technique on large data is reduced by edge clutter. In this paper, we present a novel framework to redu ..."
Abstract - Cited by 31 (6 self) - Add to MetaCart
Parallel coordinates have been widely applied to visualize high-dimensional and multivariate data, discerning patterns within the data through visual clustering. However, the effectiveness of this technique on large data is reduced by edge clutter. In this paper, we present a novel framework to reduce edge clutter, consequently improving the effectiveness of visual clustering. We exploit curved edges and optimize the arrangement of these curved edges by minimizing their curvature and maximizing the parallelism of adjacent edges. The overall visual clustering is improved by adjusting the shape of the edges while keeping their relative order. The experiments on several representative datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
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Using Text Animated Transitions to Support Navigation in Document Histories

by Fanny Chevalier, Pierre Dragicevic, Anastasia Bezerianos, Jean-daniel Fekete, École Centrale Paris
"... Figure 1. Detail of an animated transition between two revisions of the Wikipedia article User interfaces. This article examines the benefits of using text animated transitions for navigating in the revision history of textual documents. We propose an animation technique for smoothly transitioning b ..."
Abstract - Cited by 29 (12 self) - Add to MetaCart
Figure 1. Detail of an animated transition between two revisions of the Wikipedia article User interfaces. This article examines the benefits of using text animated transitions for navigating in the revision history of textual documents. We propose an animation technique for smoothly transitioning between different text revisions, then present the Diffamation system. Diffamation supports rapid exploration of revision histories by combining text animated transitions with simple navigation and visualization tools. We finally describe a user study showing that smooth text animation allows users to track changes in the evolution of textual documents more effectively than flipping pages.
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Declarative language design for interactive visualization

by Jeffrey Heer, Michael Bostock - IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
"... Abstract—We investigate the design of declarative, domain-specific languages for constructing interactive visualizations. By sep-arating specification from execution, declarative languages can simplify development, enable unobtrusive optimization, and sup-port retargeting across platforms. We descri ..."
Abstract - Cited by 27 (5 self) - Add to MetaCart
Abstract—We investigate the design of declarative, domain-specific languages for constructing interactive visualizations. By sep-arating specification from execution, declarative languages can simplify development, enable unobtrusive optimization, and sup-port retargeting across platforms. We describe the design of the Protovis specification language and its implementation within an object-oriented, statically-typed programming language (Java). We demonstrate how to support rich visualizations without requiring a toolkit-specific data model and extend Protovis to enable declarative specification of animated transitions. To support cross-platform deployment, we introduce rendering and event-handling infrastructures decoupled from the runtime platform, letting designers retarget visualization specifications (e.g., from desktop to mobile phone) with reduced effort. We also explore optimizations such as runtime compilation of visualization specifications, parallelized execution, and hardware-accelerated rendering. We present benchmark stud-ies measuring the performance gains provided by these optimizations and compare performance to existing Java-based visualization tools, demonstrating scalability improvements exceeding an order of magnitude. Index Terms—Information visualization, user interfaces, toolkits, domain specific languages, declarative languages, optimization. 1

Benefitting infovis with visual difficulties

by Jessica Hullman, Student Member, Eytan Adar, Priti Shah - IEEE TVCG
"... Abstract—Many well-cited theories for visualization design state that a visual representation should be optimized for quick and immediate interpretation by a user. Distracting elements like decorative “chartjunk ” or extraneous information are avoided so as not to slow comprehension. Yet several rec ..."
Abstract - Cited by 23 (0 self) - Add to MetaCart
Abstract—Many well-cited theories for visualization design state that a visual representation should be optimized for quick and immediate interpretation by a user. Distracting elements like decorative “chartjunk ” or extraneous information are avoided so as not to slow comprehension. Yet several recent studies in visualization research provide evidence that non-efficient visual elements may benefit comprehension and recall on the part of users. Similarly, findings from studies related to learning from visual displays in various subfields of psychology suggest that introducing cognitive difficulties to visualization interaction can improve a userʼs understanding of important information. In this paper, we synthesize empirical results from cross-disciplinary research on visual information representations, providing a counterpoint to efficiency-based design theory with guidelines that describe how visual difficulties can be introduced to benefit comprehension and recall. We identify conditions under which the application of visual difficulties is appropriate based on underlying factors in visualization interaction like active processing and engagement. We characterize effective graph design as a trade-off between efficiency and learning difficulties in order to provide Information Visualization (InfoVis) researchers and practitioners with a framework for organizing explorations of graphs for which comprehension and recall are crucial. We identify implications of this view for the design and evaluation of information visualizations. Index Terms—desirable difficulites, cognitive efficiency, active processing, engagement, individual differences.
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PivotPaths: Strolling through Faceted Information Spaces

by Marian Dörk, Nathalie Henry Riche, Gonzalo Ramos, Susan Dumais
"... Fig. 1. A resource anchor selects a paper’s references and citations. Details are shown for one of its authors, Mary Czerwinski. Abstract—We present PivotPaths, an interactive visualization for exploring faceted information resources. During both work and leisure, we increasingly interact with infor ..."
Abstract - Cited by 19 (0 self) - Add to MetaCart
Fig. 1. A resource anchor selects a paper’s references and citations. Details are shown for one of its authors, Mary Czerwinski. Abstract—We present PivotPaths, an interactive visualization for exploring faceted information resources. During both work and leisure, we increasingly interact with information spaces that contain multiple facets and relations, such as authors, keywords, and citations of academic publications, or actors and genres of movies. To navigate these interlinked resources today, one typically selects items from facet lists resulting in abrupt changes from one subset of data to another. While filtering is useful to retrieve results matching specific criteria, it can be difficult to see how facets and items relate and to comprehend the effect of filter operations. In contrast, the PivotPaths interface exposes faceted relations as visual paths in arrangements that invite the viewer to ‘take a stroll ’ through an information space. PivotPaths supports pivot operations as lightweight interaction techniques that trigger gradual transitions between views. We designed the interface to allow for casual traversal of large collections in an aesthetically pleasing manner that encourages exploration and serendipitous discoveries. This paper shares the findings from our iterative design-and-evaluation process that included semi-structured interviews and a two-week deployment of PivotPaths applied to a large database of academic publications. Index Terms—Information visualization, interactivity, node-link diagrams, animation, information seeking, exploratory search. 1
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