9,357 research outputs found
What the eye does not see: visualizations strategies for the data collection of personal networks
The graphic representation of relational data is one of the central elements of social network analysis. In this paper, the author describe
the use of visualization in interview-based data collection procedures
designed to obtain personal networks information, exploring four
main contributions. First, the author shows a procedure by which the
visualization is integrated with traditional name generators to facilitate obtaining information and reducing the burden of the interview
process. Second, the author describes the reactions and qualitative
interpretation of the interviewees when they are presented with an
analytical visualization of their personal network. The most frequent
strategies consist in identifying the key individuals, dividing the personal network in groups and classifying alters in concentric circles
of relative importance. Next, the author explores how the visualization of groups in personal networks facilitates the enumeration of the
communities in which individuals participate. This allows the author
to reflect on the role of social circles in determining the structure of
personal networks. Finally, the author compares the graphic representation obtained through spontaneous, hand-drawn sociograms
with the analytical visualizations elicited through software tools. This
allows the author to demonstrate that analytical procedures reveal
aspects of the structure of personal networks that respondents are
not aware of, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of using
both modes of data collection. For this, the author presents findings
from a study of highly skilled migrants living in Spain (n = 95) through
which the author illustrates the challenges, in terms of data reliability,
validity and burden on both the researcher and the participants
Revisiting the Design Patterns of Composite Visualizations
Composite visualization is a popular design strategy that represents complex
datasets by integrating multiple visualizations in a meaningful and aesthetic
layout, such as juxtaposition, overlay, and nesting. With this strategy,
numerous novel designs have been proposed in visualization publications to
accomplish various visual analytic tasks. These well-crafted composite
visualizations have formed a valuable collection for designers and researchers
to address real-world problems and inspire new research topics and designs.
However, there is a lack of understanding of design patterns of composite
visualization, thus failing to provide holistic design space and concrete
examples for practical use. In this paper, we opted to revisit the composite
visualizations in VIS publications and answered what and how visualizations of
different types are composed together. To achieve this, we first constructed a
corpus of composite visualizations from IEEE VIS publications and decomposed
them into a series of basic visualization types (e.g., bar chart, map, and
matrix). With this corpus, we studied the spatial (e.g., separated or
overlaying) and semantic relationships (e.g., with same types or shared axis)
between visualizations and proposed a taxonomy consisting of eight different
design patterns (e.g., repeated, stacked, accompanied, and nested).
Furthermore, we analyzed and discussed common practices of composite
visualizations, such as the distribution of different patterns and correlations
between visualization types. From the analysis and examples, we obtained
insights into different design patterns on the utilities, advantages, and
disadvantages. Finally, we developed an interactive system to help
visualization developers and researchers conveniently explore collected
examples and design patterns
Interactive Visual Analysis of Networked Systems: Workflows for Two Industrial Domains
We report on a first study of interactive visual analysis of networked systems. Working with ABB Corporate Research and Ericsson Research, we have created workflows which demonstrate the potential of visualization in the domains of industrial automation and telecommunications. By a workflow in this context, we mean a sequence of visualizations and the actions for generating them. Visualizations can be any images that represent properties of the data sets analyzed, and actions typically either change the selection of data visualized or change the visualization by choice of technique or change of parameters
KB4VA: A Knowledge Base of Visualization Designs for Visual Analytics
Visual analytics (VA) systems have been widely used to facilitate
decision-making and analytical reasoning in various application domains. VA
involves visual designs, interaction designs, and data mining, which is a
systematic and complex paradigm. In this work, we focus on the design of
effective visualizations for complex data and analytical tasks, which is a
critical step in designing a VA system. This step is challenging because it
requires extensive knowledge about domain problems and visualization to design
effective encodings. Existing visualization designs published in top venues are
valuable resources to inspire designs for problems with similar data structures
and tasks. However, those designs are hard to understand, parse, and retrieve
due to the lack of specifications. To address this problem, we build KB4VA, a
knowledge base of visualization designs in VA systems with comprehensive labels
about their analytical tasks and visual encodings. Our labeling scheme is
inspired by a workshop study with 12 VA researchers to learn user requirements
in understanding and retrieving professional visualization designs in VA
systems. The theme extends Vega-Lite specifications for describing advanced and
composited visualization designs in a declarative manner, thus facilitating
human understanding and automatic indexing. To demonstrate the usefulness of
our knowledge base, we present a user study about design inspirations for VA
tasks. In summary, our work opens new perspectives for enhancing the
accessibility and reusability of professional visualization designs
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