Monday, August 12, 2013


Ideas Seminar – Visualization Center
Date: August 9, 2013

People use visualization tools and techniques to compose information and derive insight from massive, dynamic, ambiguous, and often conflicting data, detect the expected and discover the unexpected, provide timely, defensible, and understandable assessments, and communicate assessment effectively for action.The Charlotte Visualization Center is a highly interdisciplinary center that applies interactive visualization and visual analytics to a variety of large scale and complex problems in science, engineering, healthcare, design, and many other disciplines. When I visited to the Visualization Center, there are filled with interesting devices such as interaction devices, 3D large wall display, and a large, multiscreen stereoscopic projection system.

They showed us various examples of visualization works. First of all, Professor Wenwen Dou talks about her research interests in media analysis. Social media analysis aims to extract insights from massive social media data. She attempts to explore big data approach how the data is discussed and represented on Twitter. In addition, Professor Zachary Justin Wartell and his Ph.D student research as full-bodied virtual reality works are very fascinated me. But the most interesting research to me was urban growth simulation application at Charlotte region using multi-touched table.

When studying urban planning system and characteristics of Malaysia in Korea, I felt the need visualized materials to compare each region. The application they showed allow us to examine the areas, what kind of growth has occurred there and possible to prediction. I thought the need for visual analytics was driven by an ever increasing amount of data to analyze; increasing complexity and uncertainty in the data; decreasing amount of time to analyze the data. They present pretty clear ideas that what makes very powerful can compare the relationship between targets they want.

I think when each of us starts to analyze data, we mostly conduct keyword searches again and again, until we find something close to our information space to analyze. Today we fill our screens with complex visuals including geospatial representations, detailed linked diagrams, cluster maps, and many other representations. The situation is clear and compelling; we are awaking to the need to visualization studies. Nevertheless we need new methods, new technology, leading us into the next century.

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