Visualization Lab

8/9/2013

In many ways I think visualization research is about translating the many static, analog ways that we represented data into dynamic interactive representations. Beginning with the interactive table that we saw, the maps that we saw were not necessarily new ways of presenting the data. Population growth maps, demographic maps and elevation charts have existed for a long time, and if you print these maps out large enough act much in the same way that the table we saw does. They can be drawn on, trace maps can be overlaid on top of them, and graphs can be drawn from the data. But the thing that is different about the visualization table is the combination of all of these into one system. Now we can look at the rate of population growth, and the demographics of the same or a different area, something that would be very cumbersome to do with static methods of representation such as overlays and charts.

Then there was the interactive globe. While this ways certainly the most unstable and experimental thing that we saw I don’t know that there is a true analog counterpart to this visualization technique. It would be very hard, to overlay 3D information on a globe. As the most experimental visualization that we saw, I don’t think it has a purpose yet, but once the navigation scheme is perfected, I am sure that the technology can be used for a number of data representations.

Thus, I view visualization research in a interesting way. On one hand they are creating new ways to look at data, but on the other hand they are taking existing visualization techniques and translating them from analog to digital and making them interactive along the way. Thus, there seems to be a two-pronged approach to their research. On one hand, they are creating new ways to look at data, even when there isn’t a dataset that they envision it showing. But on the other hand they use an existing library of visualization techniques to represent data in the best way possible. It seems that once visualizations have come out of the experimental phase of development there are guidelines drawn up (user studies) as to when it is appropriate to use them. Then from the other direction, collaborations and new datasets are represented using previously studied visualization techniques according to the usage guidelines that each technique has. In this way it is distinct from graphic design in that each visualization is not a novel and potentially unresearched method of representation.