SmartLink:An Agent for Supporting Dataflow Application Construction

Visual programmable dataflow systems are an effective way to build a large class of visualization applications from existing software modules. However, the appeal of dataflow systems is often decreased as their users have to get familiar with libraries containing hundreds of different modules. Classical documentation systems such as hypertext or example suites are not always effective, as they lack the context of the user's questions and problems. We present a new visual dataflow programming assistant that is simple to use, offers context-sensitive help derived from the user's own behavior, and smoothly integrates in the effective point-and-click visual programming metaphor. We illustrate our approach with real-life usage examples

Simplified Representation of Vector Fields

Vector field visualization remains a difficult task. Although many local and global visualization methods for vector fields such as flow data exist, they usually require extensive user experience on setting the visualization parameters in order to produce images communicating the desired insight. We present a visualization method that produces simplified but suggestive images of the vector field automatically, based on a hierarchical clustering of the input data. The resulting clusters are then visualized with straight or curved arrow icons. The presented method has a few parameters with which users can produce various simplified vector field visualizations that communicate different insights on the vector data