Visual Information Design
From CS160 User Interfaces Fa06
Lecture on Nov 13, 2006
Readings
- Information Visualization. Readings in Information Visualization. Chap 1. Card, Mackinlay, Schneiderman.
Jonathan Yen - Nov 10, 2006 01:40:26 am
Information Visualization: Well, this reading is a welcome shift from the statistics readings that we all seem to be very familiar with. The concept of information visualization seems slightly related to the idea of "gulf of evaluation", where the goal is to try to make it easier to make sense of concepts and data. From what it looks like, it doesn't appear as if it would be easy to implement information visualization in computer applications, as the mappings from raw data to table data and from table data to visual structures must be correct. Depending on the scale of the application, I would imagine that a lot of thought would have to be put into determining what aspect of one domain maps to the other. However, in general, I agree that information visualization, if properly implemented in a computer application, would significantly aid in the ease of use or at least increase the application's usefulness.
David Hoffman - Nov 11, 2006 09:55:29 pm
This reading covered some interesting aspects of visualizing data. It makes some good points that people are very good at solving certain problems, however, they are very poor at keeping the whole problem in working memory as they solve it. The discussion of some of the ways humans exapand working memory by using paper and slide rules is very pertinent to designing a computer interface. The discussion of ways to present data was also a useful example of ways that software can help people solve problems. It was also interesting that the article would go into the specific parameters of vision such as cone and rod density and directing attention to the most pertinent things. In an interface this might be manifested as blinking buttons to attract the user's attention and using diagrams wherever possible to show data.
Patti Bao - Nov 11, 2006 11:37:12 pm
By extending the working memory with visual aids (p2), information visualization also seems related to one of IDEO's brainstorming rules: the space remembers. It is clear from the reading that there are already several applications that use visualization, but if it is so useful in aiding cognitive processes, I am curious as to why there are so few applications for actual classroom learning. For example, what kind of information visualization (besides mind maps) could be used to make reviewing lecture notes more effective? I am all for visualization, but I think the authors make a good point in cautioning that there are good and not-as-good ways to go about it. Has anyone ever heard of this book that blames the Challenger's o-ring tragedy on a poorly designed PPT?
Scott Friedheim - Nov 12, 2006 11:13:07 am
This chapter overwhelmingly demonstrates the ability for visualizations to enhance cognitive abilities. While I take most of these visualizations for granted without taking notice of the differences among the types, it's clear from the reading that there is much more analysis behind them. The ability to represent data visually has made me think of this in a new light. These days where information is kept, tracked, and analyzed, the field of data mining offers many abstract visualizations related to these visualization types. I can imagine a lot of research being done on how to make sense of the large amount of data collected and how to represent it visually.
Yimin Yao - Nov 12, 2006 11:43:09 am
The article does go into great details about the techniques/guidelines to produce effective graphical representations of data and how all the visual tools aid to the amplifications of cognition. I agree with the first post that the idea is linked to the previous material on "gulf of evaluation". I think the key to an effective graphical visualization tool is to choose the right representation to best describe the features/patterns in the variables of interest; it's rather interesting to see the enhancement of cognition by visual aids formalized as Increased Resourcs, Reduced Search, Enhanced Recognition of Pattern, Perceptual Inference, Perceptual Monitoring, etc. The example on the Challenger's O-ring tragedy adequently emphasizes the importance of effective visual presentation of data. when talking about visual representations, the first thing that came to mind is the common graphing tools we use for normal experimental data whose variables of interest are usually easily representable within two dimensions. When the data is large, and there are large number variables of interest, it becomes much more difficult to represent the features of each variables and the interactions among them; The article provides a serious of interesting examples sing varies methods such as the Tokyo Stock Exchange, workspaces, human anatomy, etc.
Hiroki Terashima - Nov 12, 2006 01:32:26 pm
"There are right ways and wrong ways to show data; there are displays that reveal the truth and displays that do not". This is one of the lessons of this paper, and the author conveys this with numerous examples of displays that work and don't work. The goal is to try to amplify cognition of the information by giving the user more interactive and visual displays. This reading reminded me of Google Analytics (an online tool used to monitor internet traffic to your website): it offers both a simple, interactive, and informative visual representation of what is really just a long list of numbers (large-scale data monitoring). The benefits of visualization on cognition was made obvious in the section "How visualization amplifies cognition"; the interesting part was how this became a reason for using graphing calculators to teach math in high school and how physics students are taught to start with drawing a diagram of a problem. I learned that visualization can help us and hurt us, and it is important to think about its presentation carefully.
Chen Chang - Nov 12, 2006 02:11:27 pm
I felt that this reading on information visualization was very detailed and informative and presented some nice examples. I myself am a visual person so I greatly feel the importance of picturing things rather than imagining or thinking about them. I enjoyed reading about the simple classic multiplication example right off the bat - the difference between doing a 2 digit multiplication problem mentally versus on paper and pencil results in a time difference only 1/5 time for the latter. Other examples that were presented that I felt to be relevant to discussion of why information visualization is important were the slide rule (old days) versus the graphing calculator (modern era) and how a navigation chart or a building floor plan serves as a visual "map" of an area.
The reading provided definitions for both visualization and information visualization, I found it notable that the difference between these two definitions were the result of one word being added for information visualization - "abstract" (or nonphysically based) data. Certainly, information visualization deals with abstract forms of data and I liked the comparison of the paper periodic table (traditional) versus the periodic table with sliders (info visualization).
Cognitive amplification was defined and details of knowledge crystallization and the different visualization levels of use were presented. At the core of the reading, I feel that its important to keep in mind the major ways in which visualizations can amplify cognition: by increasing the memory and processing resources available to the users, reducing the search for information, using visual representations to enhance the detection of patterns, enabling perceptual inference operations, and using perceptual attention.
Tony Yu Tung Lai - Nov 12, 2006 02:29:11 pm
The key points that I get from this article regarding information visualization are visual representations cannot be overly complex, and that it is possible to show the wrong information even it matches the data. One example of how the wrong information can be expressed even when the data isn't saying so is the mean and standard deviation example that was used in my Statisics class long time ago. In a bar chart, it shows tht 10 different classes all have the same average test scores. This chart implies that all the classes are doing equally well. However, when look at the actual data, for one of the class, half of the class is way below average, while the other half is way above average. In this case, even though the mean test score for all the classes are the same, the implication that they are doing equally well is wrong.
Maksim Lirov - Nov 12, 2006 02:57:41 pm
Information Visualization: This reading was interesting in that it provided many examples highlighting good and not so good uses of visualization techniques. Information Visualization is very useful when we have a chance to take the load off the user's working memory and in a sense increase that internal memory with a visualization. I agree with the authors' point in that some visualizations make relevant data "pop out" and make it easy to view while certain other visualizations make crucial data not so obvious. Like other people have already stated, the Challenger shuttle data presentation is one such example. The main point that I take away from this reading is that it is crucial to carefully integrate useful visualizations in your designs while being careful to not go overboard with visualizations that have the potential to not be useful or confuse the user. Going back to the interface presented in the last lecture - giving physical properties of papers to files in a graphical desktop system - one can see some visualization techniques that the designers added to aid the user. Such techniques are allowing to make creases in the document, to sort documents in a messy or neat pile, etc.... I thought that these techniques do aid some in helping the user find the information but am not sure if the sum of the visualization techniques of the whole system provides a significant increase in usability over the conventional 2D desktop.
Robert Held - Nov 12, 2006 04:25:19 pm
My favorite part of this article was the portion about using distortion to convey data trends. For example, resizing icons to indicate how recently they were used. An example of a website that uses a similar concept is buyblue.org, which one can use to look up the political contributions provided by many different corporations. In the company browsing view, one can quickly assess what portion of the company's contributions went to Democrats or Republicans. A blue donkey indicates a majority for dems, while a red elephant indicates a majority for elephants. In addition, the size of the icon depicts the size of the majority. If they company provided equal contributions to both parties, a scale is shown. The website has effectively used distortion, as described in this lecture's reading, to convey information using size and shape. It allows the user to make a quick estimate of a value without needing to look at exact numbers.
Jason Shangkuan - Nov 12, 2006 07:12:03 pm
This article really utilizes external cognition as a way to reduce mental thought processes and the various methods of achieving successful external cognition through different diagrams and charts. The most interesting part is how Cognitive Amplification is related to a more complex action cycle. Problem-solve and author decide or act are similar to the gulf of execution and forage for data and search for schema are similar to the gulf of evaluation. Although in this article the description really applies to the web and inter related characteristics, I think that these two concepts can be overlayed and show a relationship. This article focuses, however, on how visual aids and stimulation can serve to reduce these gulfs and the various forms to accomplish this. One issue I don't think is really addressed is how easy or realistic are the diagrams to make and accomplish. Many of these graphs are quite complicated and the more values added can make each one unrealistic.
Tak Wong - Nov 12, 2006 08:51:50 pm
It's interesting how the mapping data to visual form section resembles a lot to database schemas. The different data tables that were shown in reading is exactly how the database tables are usually orgainzed. The refine tables, where the stored values are binary, are the queries that refer to tables with all the information. Sometimes these binary tables can be created with views. It's also interesting how the end of the reading discusses the human eye like how we discuss the human brain in the cognition part of this class. It went into the techinical details, just like cognition, to give the numbers of how far we can see and how much we can perceieve.
Andrew Tran - Nov 12, 2006 10:03:49 pm
I like how this article crosses over to cognitive science. I am currently taking a cognitive science class, and many of the topics mentioned in this chapter was also mentioned in that class also. Such as the topic of using visualization to perform a task, such as multiplication, was discussed in cognitive science also. On the other hand, this chapter included many more topics and information that i did not learn from the cognitive science class. Some new things that i have learned are knowledge crystallization and information chromatography. I agree with the authors when they clearly try and make a fact that information visualization is to amplify cognition. Everyone knows that visual aids increases better learning. What this chapter does is try to explain on some level how that works.
Kang Chen - Nov 12, 2006 11:12:19 pm
Information Visualization: I think this article provided some very interesting examples and ways of enhanching our cognitive abilities. One of the examples that really caught my attention was Sue trying to buy a laptop computer for the workgroup. In order to do so, she went through a series of steps to gather information and then storing it in table forms. In the article, the relevant information were stored in columns and each product in rows. This is surprisingly similar to how databases work in reality and without surprise, the definition of databases are also called schema. After doing some comparisons (equivalent of database operations), Sue then creates graphical representations of her findings. This whole process of gathering information, compressing it, and finally making sense of it would be difficult if we had solely relied on our working memory.
Michael Mai - Nov 13, 2006 01:14:57 am
Reading through this article, I was impressed with the level of detail and the amount of examples that were presented. The cost structure section discussing the iso-cost lines brings back memories of how we want to place elements in our UI so that the time to move/grab procedures is the same. Continuing on, I believe the most important feature of visualization is the grouping of information to allow patterns to show themselves, primarily used in statistics. This feature can also lead to manipulation of data in order to get the patterns you want, like creating a drawing on a computer. In terms of the Raw-data to Data Table to Visualization, I have a different interpretation of what the tables look like. To some, the tables look like a database with the metadata arrangement, but to me, they look more like tables of data in an excel spreadsheet. The data inside the tables are usually just numbers used to map out images like how you build graphs in excel more so then a means of fluid data storage. Finally, although its not always the correct way to encoding data, I find it easiest to look at temporally encoded visualizations.
Edward Karuna - Nov 13, 2006 04:13:08 am
It is remarkable just how much a visual representation of data can enhance the absorption and analysis of that data, and this reading make that point very clear. In addition, the reading demonstrates how different ways of presenting the data can either mask or uncover patterns in the data. In retrospect, such a property of graphical data representation seems obvious, but it didn't strike me until after I did the reading.
Huangnankun - Nov 13, 2006 05:36:07 am
This article talks about information visualization. I find it interesting since it expands up the previous article, which talks about statistics. In the information visualization schemes presented here, many uses statistic as a basis to produce these visualizations. I learnt that the inner workings of the human brain in reaction to different ways that data are presented. Visualization is a technique which enhances the human understanding of data by improving cognition through visual aids and cues. The article introduces a few of these tools which we can use such as visual tales, graphs and various kinds of plots. However i think that visual cues can also be very misleading if its not used correctly. An example scenario is if you look at a 3D graph from only 1 axis, then you will only see a plane and not the whole picture. Many visualization tools which I've used tends to have a similiar effect because it uses some forms of lossy algorithm to compute the final visualized data. I think that at best, visualization should abstraction, it should not simplify the data in any way that cause a loss in information.
Tabassum Khan - Nov 13, 2006 07:52:36 am
Visualization has been used for over thousands of years to communicate information and ideas. Maps have been discovered on Babylonian clay tablets from about 2300 B.C. Visualization has proven to be useful through several millenia of human civilization. I often find myself visualizing and therefore experiencing the picture that words represent. It has always been easier for me to remember information that i see rather than what i read. This reading has covered very interesting aspects of information visualization. It re-iterates the main idea of the last reading i.e the importance of converting raw data into some kind of visual form so that it can display its intended meaning.
Heung Tai - Nov 13, 2006 08:49:45 am
The idea of the reading is easy to understand, but the details are so technical and unnecessarily hard. What's the point of using nomograph in example? Anyways, I totally agree that visual presentation of data helps a lot on intepreting data. I can tell in a glance of the picture that what category has higher value and what is the distribution of each cateogry. I think the reason behind this is that there only certain things to compare in pictures. For number, human being have to recognize and intepret each number, e.g. realize 9 is larger than 1, which is slower than simply tell which part is bigger. Of course, the danger of using visual aid is that differen people may intepret it in different ways while actual number is universal and only convery one meaning. So to use visual aid, we have to make sure it's simple to understand and is clear.
Alex Wallisch - Nov 13, 2006 09:43:59 am
To me, the most obvious effect of visualization on cognition is the effect of code indentation on the reader's ability to understand it. I think everybody has seen, at some point or other, a novice programmer write a program all at a single level of indentation with little to no use of white space to separate segments from one another, and I think that we'd all agree that this is a chore to try to work your way through. When blocks are properly indented, it provides visual cues to the user of the intended program flow and the relationship of different pieces of code.
Patrick Rodriguez - Nov 13, 2006 10:37:45 am
I have always been fascinated with graphs and charts and other visual depictions of data. I liked seeing the variety of different visualizations in this chapter. Some of them are very unique and innovative, and convey the right idea very quickly. The same data could be conveyed with text or other forms of graphics, but in a less efficient manner. I think most of us prefer graphics over text whenever possible, at least when a large amount of data needs to be analyzed. This chapter showed, quite technically, why this is.
Roland Carlos - Nov 13, 2006 11:04:04 am
The point of the article seems simple enough, graphical representations can provide major assistance with data depiction and recollection if used correctly. The variety of examples in the reading was a large positive for it, as it showed us how many different ways and situations we can use graphical representations (seemingly almost anywhere?). Use of graphics has become so commonplace that we're all used to it by now in our interfaces but until we read something like this we don't know good we have it (when we're forced to see the alternative). I do think, however, that graphical representations can be misused, for example, a representation giving us far more information than we need which would just confuse a user. But for the most part, the benefits overweigh the negatives.
Ramy Ghabrial - Nov 13, 2006 11:13:27 am
I thought the following assertion was the most interesting one in the reading: "The progress of civilization can be read in the invention of visual artifacts, from writing mathematics, to maps, to printing, to diagrams, to visual computing... The real powers come from devising external aids that enhance cognitive abilities." I think it is true that vision and cognitive enhancement have played a crucial role in the majority of our most useful inventions, and it is certainly an interesting way of looking at progress. Another thing I drew from the reading was the importance of properly visualizing data. Although this does not apply directly to our project, since we are not handling large amounts of data -- indirectly, we have all seen a major example of this, as our programs all convert large numbers of pen samples into images representing legible handwriting.
Andrew Hao - Nov 13, 2006 11:20:44 am
Has anybody heard of Sparklines? These are neat little line graphs, pie graphs, all-kinds-of-quirky graphs that are super thin enough to read on a line of text. So for example, if we were an online journal quoting a company (say, Microsoft), we may quote: "Third quarter earnings weaker than expected for software giant Microsoft ([stock ticker Sparkline here] MSFT), who reported pushing release of Windows Vista into late 2011."
These things are so neat simply because they are so small and fit into a line of text. Thus, the written component (the text) easily complements the visual and spatial component (the Sparkline visualization) all within context. Sparklines are like the candy sprinkles on your fro-yo dessert -- you're there for the yogurt, but darnit, those sprinkles make it so much better.
- Nov 13, 2006 11:46:22 am
Information visualization is the representation of data graphically that gives the readers a understanding and insight into the data. Information visualization will compress a lot of data into one picture. It can display relationship between different quantities, for example, both in space and time, position and names and also new space-like structures. It opens up the possibility to view the data selectively. The rapid increase of today computer speed and memory provide an environment to develop more complex and more realistic simulations. However, this will bring with us huge amounts of data. We need more graphics power to visualize these multi-dimensional data sets. One very common example of using information visualization is the digital animations produced to present meteorological data during weather reports on television. That picture combined that movement of pressure, the coordinate of temperature and the satellite photos together. This make the data more easily to be understand.
Melissa Jiang - Nov 13, 2006 11:44:59 am
I agree that visualization is very important. I remember reading through some magazines that analyze the population of differnet parts in the United States. If just given the raw numbers of places, then I probably would not go through the numbers thoroughly and see the signficance of it. However, the article writer laid out a map of US and had spikes representing the population of each region. This was userful because from just a glance, I could see the population levels of different major cities in US and the main point then just stuck out: population is really low in the mid-west. I did not have to read the whole article to realize that.
However, while visual information is important, I wonder how does it relate to the design process. I would imagine that visual information would be useful when trying to provide a huge amount of information to a person. However, is what we are doing presenting a huge amount of information to a person? Do we want to use visual information to show the users how to use our system?
Qingyun Tang - Nov 13, 2006 11:31:25 am
Visualization is very important to any user interface. I did a research and came up with the icons for our project. Before adding these icons, our interface looked plain and ghetto; after adding the icons, the program immediately looked much more professional, and better visual aids helped to tell users what each modules' functionalities were. The article addressed 6 major ways in which visualizations can amplify cognition: by increasing the memory and processing resources available to the users, by reducing the search for information, by using visual representations to enhance the detection of patterns, by enabling perceptual inference operations, by using perceptual attention mechanisms for monitoring, and by encoding information in a manipulable medium. I think the six ways are equally important to make visualization useful to the users that they actually help to make the interaction easier.
Kimberly Lau - Nov 13, 2006 11:42:54 am
This paper was an extremely interesting read. I completely agree that we are very visual learners (or people, in general). I already saw myself reflected in the very first example about doing mental multiplication versus using pen and paper -- anytime I do a multiplication, it helps me immensely when I finger out the equation on my hand because I can "see" the numbers. Charts and diagrams are also much preferred over text that divulges identical information. It is just much quicker to absorb and learn information when it is presented visually because it allows for fast comparisons and easy understanding. Even in Powerpoint, students are always directed to have minimal text and instead use pictures and diagrams.
Johnathan Hawley - Nov 13, 2006 11:37:18 am
Information Visualization - The article points out that tasks that are actually quite simple can become difficult when they overextend the amount of working memory available. The more visual data that can be displayed in front of the user while he or she is doing a task, the easier the task will seem. We should remember to tax our user's working memory as little as possible with our UI designs. I additionally liked the quote that said math is about insight not numbers. It was applied to UI when it stated that visualization is about insight, not about pictures. This is important because I think we get wrapped up too much in the pictures. In order for a UI to design to be really effective, we need to take a step back and get an intuitive feel if the system is really insightful for what we are trying to represent.
Rayhan Lal - Nov 13, 2006 12:26:59 pm
This is an aspect of interfaces I did not really think about, but now understand its importance. Conveying information visually can make even the largest datasets manageable. It is a testament to our evolution as a species that we could use tools to expand our working memory. I like the way visualizations are described as transforms of non-visual data. Basing visualization on what we have learned causes an unconscious response allows us to come up with novel ways to present data. As the reading concludes proper visualization is a wonderful tool, but a poorly chosen representation can lead to disaster.
Bowen Li - Nov 13, 2006 12:31:00 pm
I think the reading definitely made the point that displaying information in a visually appealing and useful manner is no easy task. There are so many different ways to display different types of data, that finding a "good" way is really an art form and specific to each task. The website that Patti refered to is a good example of just how difficult that task can be. Even with so many different engineers working on the space shuttle, such accidents can still happen because the information was not displayed correctly. It is conceivable that in the future, as the world becomes more and more dependent on mathematical data, presenting it in a useful manner will become more and more important.
Jason Lee - Nov 13, 2006 12:24:14 pm
This reading took quite a bit of time to get started, as the first several pages spent a lot of time simply reviewing a lot of different examples of visual aides and how exactly they went about aiding cognition in the human mind. Personally, I felt this was a bit much and a lot of beating over the head with examples, as after the first two or three, it is pretty obvious to the reader how important visual aids are in our daily life, even if they weren't really aware before as to the extent of their importance. The article could've done a better job being selective about which examples and therefore cut down on space and text.
Criticisms of the article aside, the article did a good job of breaking down exactly why visualizations are so helpful to understanding a concept or idea. Of particular note were the six reasons that visualizations can amplify cognition. Though these reasons (of which the most important, in my opinion, are reducing the search for information, using visual representations to enhance detection of patterns, and encoding information in a manipulable medium) seem very obvious at first glance, it is easy to take these for granted as we use visualizations in nearly every aspect of our everyday lives and rarely think about why it is that visual aids help us in understanding information and data. Using this information, as well as the following section "Mapping Data to Visual Form" will help us to think about how to design our UI in a fashion that will assist the user in figuring out what steps need to be taken to complete the tasks they wish to accomplish with our products. As another point of criticism, though there may have been nothing more to say at that point, it would have been nice to have small subsections further explaining each of the six reasons that visualizations can amplify cognition.
Jonathan Chang - Nov 13, 2006 12:36:42 pm
While I agree that visual stimulation and the use of visual cues in interface well go far in improving our cognition relative to an application, I feel like this article is missing out on the other senses. Even activities performed in elementary school classrooms reveal people as being many different types of learners; some better aurally, or others tactile, besides visual. I believe there can be discussion on how to address these people as well. While tactile feedback may be a little far away for computer interfaces, aural is certainly present in our everyday applications. Even something as simple as the sound of a button clicking goes a long way to convincing that it's actually a button, and that my actions have taken a direct influence.
Sung Yi - Nov 13, 2006 12:48:48 pm
This reading was quite interesting in that it puts emphasis on the importance of presenting data or information visually. The CS people (not only) people often encounter its importance in such situations as when trying to understand the internal data structure of thousands of lines of code. It takes days to understand such code and make picture of the it in mind, whereas looking at pictures with boxes and arrows to represent the data structure is much easier to comprehend and takes much less time. That's why the visual documentation, rather than word, is so important and will be more and more significant in the future. The problem however with this is that wrong perception of the visual from the documenter's intention will result in a disastrous outcome.
Ming Huang - Nov 13, 2006 12:13:43 pm
This chapter of Information Visualization is truely an eye-opening read. It shows us good insight into information encoding, specifically in the visual sense. The chapter takes us through various visual aids, and evaluate their usefulness to the specific tasks at hand. It illustrated much of the common techniques of tabulating metadata, using color gradiants, level lines, and spatial arrangements of data to help people to encode information in cognitively meaningful ways. These in turn moves it from working memory into deeper, more long-lasting stoage (like the long-term memory). It also shows us advance visualization techniques such as various mappings of tabluated data to visual structures and the utilization of special shapes, widgets, and 3D graphics to aid such visualization. Computers are designed as efficient processors of abstract data. Therefore I feel that in a general sense, computer user interfaces, as tools for humans to interact with information, is very much a category of information visualization. We are trying to carry out mental mappings and make sure that it appears clear to the designers and to the users. Deciphering properties of various kinds of non-visual information and trying to present them as helpfully as possible is definitely going to be a strong theme in human computer interaction.
Tom McClure - Nov 13, 2006 12:47:13 pm
Yes, a picture is worth 1,000 words, give or take, but a picture that does not tell the whole story can make you lose your shirt. Also, a picture that tries to say too much at once runs the risk of saying nothing at all. I used to work with a woman who was pioneering a graphical method for representing the strength of the correlations of responses in survey data. If there was a high correlation for answering yes to question 42 and answering no to question 12, this would be represented by a larger dot on a matrix chart. Unfortunately, this information was combined with some additional regression analysis so that the color of the dots had meaning too, and instead of a nice easy-to-follow matrix, everything was plotted in a polar representation which represented yet another attribute so that in the end nobody could really garner any useful information from the charts we were producing.
She was on the right track, but if she had followed more of the principles laid out here she might have retained a few more clients.
Siyan Wang - Nov 13, 2006 12:52:52 pm
This article seemed more in line with what I had originally expected this class to be. However, the equations and visualization techniques they were demonstrating were a bit out of my area of expertise (besides the multiplication one), so I could not relate to the article as well. However, I do agree that visualization of information so that it produces the least amount of strain on the user is extremely helpful. With such visualization processes, the user is much more prepared to process the information, which creates much more reliable results.
Michael Moeng - Nov 13, 2006 01:01:48 pm
I think what really displays the power of Visual Information is the fact that often, as with misleading graphs like Tony Lai's example or especially optical illusions-- visual information is more strongly held than what the brain's working memory may hold. Perhaps this is because the visual information is a constant stream, and thus will eventually overwrite the data in working memory, even if the two conflict
Dexter Lau - Nov 13, 2006 01:27:04 pm
This reading reminds me about how PowerPoint presentations are (supposed to be) made. Namely keeping each slide simple and focused and minimizing the text by replacing it with visual enhancements. This can include charts, pictures, movies, sounds, etc. Any of these types of media can be used to recall certain functions and instructions that can help the user complete his/her task quickly. Using visualizations calls upon thoughts that recall basic ideas that can spell out something more quickly and effectively than words.
Anirudh Vemprala - Nov 13, 2006 01:27:09 pm
The reading was a good survey of the field of information visualization and the various sub-components of the field. The authors started the chapter with an examination of popular visualization tools (navigation charts, diagrams etc) and then went on to define information visualization. The description of cognitive amplification section provided the psychological underpinnings for the subject and was described in terms of reducing search costs, enhancing pattern recognition, boosting perceptual inference and other related steps. The discussion on data tables was rather dry though - reminded me of my database class. The section on visual structures, however, was quite informative.
Eric Yoon - Nov 13, 2006 03:26:54 pm
The gist of this article seems to be that even extremely complex data can often be reworked and understood if visualized correctly. The article notes that sometimes the truthfulness of the depiction can be slightly compromised in the quest to better capture the essence of the trends in the data, or to aid in calculation. An example of this was the use of linear drawings to assist marine navigators, although the world is actually curved. This tradeoff made me think of how political party affiliation is often portrayed (a timely subject, given the recent midterm election.) Now the concept of a "red state" or a "blue state" has become a fixture of the media and day to day conversation. We are now all acquainted with a political map in which Republican states are colored red and Democratic states are colored blue, based on whether or not the majority voted for President Bush. I remember reading an article, though, that argued that such a depiction is misleading, because such maps give the sense of a politically polarized country, with tiny urban blue areas struggling to survive against a mass of red states in the south and midwest. Such maps are useful in understanding how Senate or presidential votes were counted; but they are misleading in terms of understanding what sort of political beliefs Americans actually have. So to remedy this, the article painted regions red or blue not on the state level, but on the district level. The map that emerged was much more of a patchwork quilt, and resembled very much a purple nation instead.
Robert Taylor - Nov 14, 2006 09:30:40 pm
I found this reading much more interesting and relevant over the recent statistical reading; I can see why the professor has such an interest in it. The way we present data to users is very important so that they may better understand it; especially with the increasing amounts of data users have to manipulate and understand, it is imperative that we find good techniques to convey this information. We are getting to a point with computer hardware that more advanced techniques can be done with graphics; it would be interesting to see what is done with 3D rendering in the future. Of course we heard and lecture, and some of us know from experience, that not every interface works when reperesented in 3D. However pushing data into a 3D visual aid could help pepople much hbetter wrap their minds around complex data, and esepecially shorten the gulf between what the data can and does represent and what the user thinks it could represent.
Simon Tan - Nov 15, 2006 03:54:50 am
Comment 1: This reading brings to mind the topic of the Gulf of Evaluation. We already know that users grasp what's going on quicker if the information presented to them is in a more graphical, clear form. Visual data is usually better than raw data. At first, I wondered if this reading was rehashing concepts we already knew, but it turned out to be a more detailed look at the types of information visualization as well as cognitive theory (i.e. knowledge crystallization).
Comment 2: The examples used herein were compelling reasons for visual information design. The Challenger rocket, especially, as it reminded me of another instance where poor presentation of information cost people their lives in a flying machine: the auto-completing airport name system that made a plane turn into a canyon wall? Events like these should clearly implicate that people working on systems where human lives are at risk really need to design their system carefully. It seems we are more prone to learn from our mistakes, though, as events like these continue happening.
P.S. Where is the Apple Graphing Calculator today?
Utsav Shah - Nov 19, 2006 12:45:57 pm
The reading was quite interesting as it focused on presenting information visually to reduce errors and increase ease of use on the users’ part. I liked the way how author explains various forms of visualizations using appropriate examples. I thoroughly enjoyed the section in which author talks about how information visualization amplifies cognition. If similar information can be grouped together, simplified and organized if presented visually. Also, it reduces unnecessary searching by the user and expands user’s working memory. And as we learned earlier in the semester that recognition is better than recall, a good visualization helps user recognize the information rather than recalling it.
I like how author defines “visualization” and quotes that “the purpose of visualization is insight, not pictures”. It’s interesting because one can still represent data visually and not use pictures. The one good example I can think of is of craigslist, the site doesn’t have any pictures but still is one of the most used sites on the internet. One can argue that it’s too cluttered but after familiarizing yourself with the site, it’s not so hard to navigate the site. I’m a visual learner, meaning I understand concepts much better if I see some visual examples rather than just reading about it.
Aleksandr (Sasha) Ashpis - Nov 19, 2006 07:47:09 pm
- The article talks about knowledge crystallization and gives an interesting diagram on page 10. But the example given is if one wanted to buy a new laptop, and according to this diagram, it is assumed that all decisions are made based on rational logical thought. In addition, it is also assumed that people go out and research before every purchase. If this were true, I believe the diagram would be more accurate, but the diagram does not take into account impulse buys or buying something based on aesthetics. These are just some of the factors not incorporated into the diagram, which is a good starting point but needs to be developed further.
- As discovered by research in 1987, people deal with diagrams better than raw data. In my personal experience when I have an excel spreadsheet with a lot of values, they mean nothing to me other than the data. But if were to graph then or convert to some other diagram, then I would be able to draw conclusions, notice trends, etc... Of course, to create a helpful diagram one would definitely have to create a valid diagram, with proper categories, axis or what the standard measurement is the particular diagram, because without that, the diagram becomes more of a hindrance than a helpful tool.
Yang Wang - Nov 20, 2006 12:05:28 am
I believe this article is actually really relevant and interesting. First, I was reading how human process the information. They need the external display mainly for the fact that they do not have such huge mental capacity to hold enough informations. And this really affect their reasoning skill, and the ability to solve very complex issues. We refer to smarter people as those who greater mind capacity, that they are able to solve things in their mind quickly. But now, people in position (ex: the interviewer) start to recognize people that are able to solve a problem quickly when they have the external aid. For example, when we are applying for a software engineering position. It is often encouraged that we diagram and dissecting the problem on a piece of paper, rather then trying to do everything in our head. Because the ability to use a external aid is also a skill. No matter how smart a person is, he is going to run into complex problems that he can't solve all at once. Thus, the ability to use a external aid to break down the problem become extremely useful. Thus those in the habit of using external aid or visualization may not solve simple problems very fast, but they are able to tackle more difficult problems.
Yang Wang - Nov 20, 2006 12:12:40 am
Another point that I want to make is drawn from the experience I have from internship. The project I done really demonstrated how important the idea of visualization is. I worked for a company with tons of geographical/demographical data. The problem is that with such great amount of data, yet no one is really interest in looking at them. In one sentence, people don't like to look at numbers. In others words that we have learned today, people simply can't retain all these numbers in their memory to make it into something useful. Thus, the usage of visualization become extremely important. It changes the the dry, rough data into a chart or a graph and people can easily identify. The idea of visualization is so important that people are willing to spend a large amount of money to hire programmers to develop tools for that.
David Eitan Poll - Nov 20, 2006 01:24:18 am
I, too, found this reading quite interesting. It touches on the importance of visualization in user interfaces, which I think is quite fitting. As far as user interfaces go, the visual component is often among the most important. Visual cues allow us to interact more rapidly with the interface, as they generally require less mentation for comprehension (of course there are plenty of examples of bad interfaces that demonstrate how this can go awry). However, more important than the rapidness with which one can use an interface is the visual cues' ability to portray complex ideas clearly and succinctly, not necessarily in natural language.
Along these same lines, the reading talks about visualizations as a tool for portraying large amounts of data. Imagine trying to take in a column of a thousand numbers on the screen and making sense of it all. Now, imagine each of those numbers as a point on the number line (in a histogram), quickly portraying distributions in the data, among other useful information. This is the power of effective data visualization. It allows users to see the big picture (no pun intended) at a glance, and when used appropriately can be an outstanding tool for enabling more powerful user interaction.
Bryce Lee - Nov 20, 2006 01:16:09 am
It is interesting to think that some interfaces (in the example, arithmetic by hand), are unquestionably accepted, while others are criticized heavily. While the article points out many good fundamentals, I do not agree with their selection of examples. For example, the Visible Decisions Stock monitor has many different affordances (such as being able to grab the yellow curve. However, I do see the power in the sheer amount of data displayed in a single window.
Knowledge Crystallization is also an important metaphor to further understand visual processing. It provides a structured approach to breaking down the data transformation. When designing databases from scratch, the end result visualization is not always clear, and understanding this process helps highlight the key emphases.
Charles Lee - Nov 20, 2006 08:36:44 am
Information Visualization 1: As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Humans can interpret many types of visualizations much faster and more effectively than other forms of communication, and this allows the problem at hand to stay within the locus of attention. Otherwise, when unlinked by a visualization, there can be many more separate concepts to remember and consider, combating each other for space in the user's short-term memory for the short time the user is willing to focus on the topic. The result is just that the user notices less information.
Information Visualization 2: The topic of using visualizations to better convey information opens a lot of potential tactics. My favorite is distortion, where the representations are altered in a way to make them readily convey more information to the user. The truth is that there often is enough information to overwhelm the user, and the decision of which information is most relevant is made easier by creative ways to include more information, period, in a way that is still easy-to-read.
Randy Hilarbo - Nov 20, 2006 11:46:19 am
I find this article very interesting. It confirms how visualization can help convey information about data thay may otherwise be left unnoticed without presenting them in a diagram, chart or other visualization forms. I thought it is obvious that visualization can aid us in understanding results and whatnot better than other means but the idea of how visualization can actually present important new information or new observation from just arranging data is something I have not realized before. One way to apply the information we gathered from this reading into our interfaces is to be concern on how much information we are presenting to our users. I also like the way this article brings out reasons of why visualization amplifies cognition. It does makes sense the how use of visualization extends our working memory. While working on a math problem or something, simple diagrams on paper does help us work faster since they are available to us pretty easily.
I'm guessing that it is way faster for us to process information between our perception processors (sight, etc) and working memory than between our working memory and our long term memory. And I realized that visualization is one reason for this. One way to apply the information we gathered from this reading into our interfaces is to be concern on how much information we are presenting to our users. If for some reason, we need to present more information than what our users' working memory can handle, we can use visualization in our interfaces to store these information.
Eric Vacca - Nov 20, 2006 11:20:20 am
Is a picture worth 1000 or 10000 words? The correct answer depends on the picture. If information is presented in order to amplify "cognitive recognition" then to be able to get the same overall information from the data would be nearly impossible. This article starts from basic forms of visualization such as writing arithmetic and progresses to more and more complicated forms of data, both abstract and concrete. The more complicated the data the more difficult it is to derive usable, truthful information.
Reading this chapter i was repetitively reminded of code breakers. The task is different that normal visualization. In real life although the data may be hiding your results, it is not meant to be hidden, that is to say given the right analysis the correct answer can often be found. Codes are designed so you cannot find the answer. Code breaking now is done more by computers, but there are still those people who look at large amounts of encrypted data and using visualization techniques can solve the puzzle. The larger the data set the more important it is to find underlying patterns.
Jae Chang - Nov 20, 2006 12:29:43 pm
Comment1: This article demonstrates how information visualization is important. Information visualization shows data graphically so readers, including author herself, to understand the data quickly and clearly. For example, in computer science as other students mentioned, reading code without any information visualization is much harder to understand than reading with information visualization. So, the Unified Modeling Language (UML) instead of long word explanation is used in the software industries to help other people’s understanding. However, it is true that information visualization itself does not explain everything. I believe that information visualization and word-based explanation both are needed; information visualization is needed to make interpretation of data easier to understand, and word-based explanation is needed to help readers to understand objects and information visualization.
Comment2: This reading reminds me of the lecture slide long time ago, where Prof. Agrawala talked about a pilot relying too heavily on the automated system that resulted in the plane's sudden shift in direction and crash. This could also apply to the concept of visual information -- rather than using words to input to the system, the UI could've instead display some kind of visual map for the user (pilot) to pick a destination. This way it could lessen such mistake of the pilot, since pilots are usually more comfortable recognizing physical locations (with pictures) directly than looking at city names (in words) and mapping back again to the corresponding location in their head.
CharlesLeung - Nov 20, 2006 12:31:51 pm
I really liked their example for using paper and pencil multiplication as a way to expand the mind's cognitive performance. Although I would think that most of us already realized that doing non-trivial multiplication on paper is a lot faster, I don't think that any of us really closely though about why it was the case that it is so much faster. The example of the slide ruler also shows how the mind can easily explore new "what if" possibilities by playing around with a visual aid.
I also think that the section on diagrams was very interesting because it showed how important the way information is represented in a diagram is. I think the tide phases diagram is a good example of a clear and useful diagram because it shows the user a lot of information in a relatively compact and easy to understand format. As for building UIs, I think that designing good diagrams is probably a very important aspect that I wouldn't have put too much though into before taking this class. Not that I think about it, having good diagrams makes a big difference between whether I want to use a certain program or not.
Julius Cheng - Nov 20, 2006 03:20:18 pm
This article explores a critically important aspect of interface design, and I found it extremely interesting, and unfortunate that we probably won't explore visualization in a hands-on way too much for the remainder of this class. It is important not to just consider when and where to present data to the user, but also how. In this way, the reading is similar to the one about the gulf of evaluation, but one can say that it highlights the fact the gulf of evaluation is not a one-dimensional ordeal. Different representations have different advantages, and it is not always that one represenation of data is categorically better than another. As mentioned in the reading, it's not the raw data that's important, it's the insights that a user can gain from its presentation.
I remember being in Calculus AP as a high school student, and spending time just playing with my TI-86, plugging in formulas and observing their visualizations. Like the reading mentioned about graphing calculators, the visualizations were vital to my understanding of the subject matter. When I finished the reading and thought back to other times were visualizations I took for granted contributed heavily into my insight into something, I gained a far greater understanding of what this reading is getting at.
Cheng-Lun Yang - Dec 07, 2006 10:15:20 pm
1. I am interested that how changing the way to present some data will dramatically affect observer’s interpretation. It is similar to the “face or vase” pictures showed in class. Even just changing the shape of the graph changes people’s perception on what is showed in the picture.
2.I remember in one of the psychology course I took that movie makers actually put in political words in the movie to affect viewers. In the movies, they flash offensive political words against certain candidate so fast that human eyes can not catch. However, the words still leave mark in the viewers’ brains and slowly affect their thinking. It is a scary way of propaganda that I never think of.
Robin Franco - Dec 15, 2006 12:10:41 pm
Comment 1: The human mind itself operates in a very visual world. By creating a visual representation of data, we are able to take advantage of much of the internal machinery built into our visual processing sections of our brain. For example, the introduction of the xy-plane in algebra centuries ago opened up a whole new sector of mathematics. By simply allowing this visualization of data, mathematicians were able to build new theorems and formulas on top of the data. Higher-level abstraction, in this example, is the name of the game.
Comment 2: Since there is only so much the human mind can process at one point, the problem becomes how much information can be presented to a user. The first step in answer this question is to determine the user. A power user is more likely to be able to take in vast amounts of data and quickly gain what they desire. On the other hand, a casual user is in danger of being flooded by too much data. I like the approach the Nero Burning software has taken: they have two modes. One advanced mode provides all the data and options one could possibly desire. But for a novice user who just wants to copy a CD, the default simple interface allows just simple pointing and clicking to do the most common tasks.
DavidWallace - Dec 15, 2006 07:45:02 pm
1). I'm a big fan of info visualization. The brain is a fantastic pattern-recognition machine, and if we can present data in a format well-suited to the brain's hardware, we can discover trends in the data we might not have otherwise found. The article frames this as "using vision to think", which is a way I had not thought of it before, but I suppose it's accurate -- our vision-processing hardware is sophisticated, and it can do a lot of work for us.
2). There are lies, damn lies, and statistics. The potential for misuse of info-viz techniques is huge. A simple technique like stretching a graph vertically and cropping off the bottom can dramatically skew the interpretation of the data. Steve Jobs used this trick in one of his keynotes: http://presentationzen.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/3d_slide.jpg By using a 3D graph and setting the minimum to 1000 instead of 0, he exaggerates the importance of his data.
