Transcript Browsing through an Information Visualization Design Space

Browsing through an Information
Visualization Design Space
using ILOG Discovery
InfoViz 2004
9/10/04
Thomas Baudel
ILOG Discovery
Visual Data Analysis tool + software component
Seek and demonstrate structure, pattern, trends and
exceptions through interactive visualizaitons
"Concept software":
Not designed for a particular use
Even though it has its "little" success stories
Freely available
Find out on your nearby search engine…
1/9
Main Features
Full fledged visual data analysis features
Given table-shaped data sets:
Visualize: overviews, graphs, histograms, maps, custom
views…
Interact: select, drill-down, filter, navigate, cross-view
compare…
Report: save and retrieve views and projects, share results.
Based on a unified viewing model
"Data-linear visualizations"
2/9
Data-Linear Visualizations
Visualization algorithms which require at most a
fixed number of passes through the data set
can be described by a canonical model
Which consists of a fixed data-flow with
1. A fixed set of parameters:
Partition, Order, Primitive assignment, Decoration
2. Recursively applicable data-flow
3. State-handling co-routines
associated to data-flow nodes
Note: the parameters are pure programming language expressions
3/9
Demo
4/9
Other Views
5/9
Parameters Summary
• Assigning graphic
primitives and attributes to
individual objects
• Multiple graphic
primitives per object
• Partitioning to assign a
graphic primitive to a
group of objects
• Conditions
• Recursive application of
style sheet
• State handling through
variables and
accumulators
=> ability to evaluate, to
handle state, to iterate &
to branch.
6/9
Conclusion
Ability to create intermediate representation types
Ability to mix visualization features
Create visualizations interactively, through
(hierarchical) form-like parameter sheet
Reach a precisely defined, wide class of
visualizations: data-linear visualizations
A model similar to what the relational model was
to DBMS
7/9
Towards a common InfoViz
infrastructure 1
Should the InfoViz community aim at
defining an « SQL » for information
visualization ?
 In which case the ILOG Discovery model
could be inspirational
8/9
Towards a common InfoViz
infrastructure 2
Formal models are OK, yet what users want is more
something like a toolkit:
-
rendering engine
notification network
I/O
support windows (editors, scales...)
actions
interactors
...
As part of a wider application development
environment
9/9
Acknowledgement
OADymPPaC research project
(French Ministry of Research)
ILOG Discovery development team
Jean-Daniel Fekete, INRIA Futurs
Jacques Bertin, EHESS
Free trial version :
http://www2.ilog.com/preview/Discovery