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Implied dynamics in information visualization

Published: 26 May 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Information visualization is a powerful method for understanding and working with data. However, we still have an incomplete understanding of how people use visualization to think about information. We propose that people use visualization to support comprehension and reasoning by viewing abstract visual representations as physical scenes with a set of implied dynamics between objects. Inferences based on these implied dynamics are metaphorically extended to form inferences about the represented information. This view predicts that even seemingly meaningless properties of a visualization, including such minor design elements as borders, background areas, and the connectedness of parts, may affect how people perceive semantic aspects of data by suggesting different potential dynamics between data points. We present a study that supports this claim and discuss the design implications of this theory of information visualization.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    AVI '10: Proceedings of the International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces
    May 2010
    427 pages
    ISBN:9781450300766
    DOI:10.1145/1842993
    • Editor:
    • Giuseppe Santucci
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 26 May 2010

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    • (2023)Eye-tracking detection of the area of interest in data visualizationПрограммные системы и вычислительные методы10.7256/2454-0714.2023.2.43502(49-62)Online publication date: Feb-2023
    • (2023)Studies of Part-to-Whole Glanceable Visualizations on Smartwatch Faces2023 IEEE 16th Pacific Visualization Symposium (PacificVis)10.1109/PacificVis56936.2023.00028(187-196)Online publication date: Apr-2023
    • (2022)Visualization in Motion: A Research Agenda and Two EvaluationsIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics10.1109/TVCG.2022.318499328:10(3546-3562)Online publication date: 1-Oct-2022
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