The Happy Marriage of
Geographic Information Systems and
Information Visualization
Ben Shneiderman
ben@cs.umd.edu
Founding Director (1983-2000), Human-Computer Interaction Lab
Professor, Department of Computer Science
Member, Institutes for Advanced Computer Studies &
Systems Research
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
Interdisciplinary research community
- Computer Science & Psychology
- Information Studies & Education
(www.cs.umd.edu/hcil)
Scientific Approach (beyond user friendly)
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Specify users and tasks
Predict and measure
• time to learn
• speed of performance
• rate of human errors
• human retention over time
Assess subjective satisfaction
(Questionnaire for User Interface Satisfaction)
Accommodate individual differences
Consider social, organizational & cultural context
Design Issues
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Input devices & strategies
• Keyboards, pointing devices, voice
• Direct manipulation
• Menus, forms, commands
Output devices & formats
• Screens, windows, color, sound
• Text, tables, graphics
• Instructions, messages, help
Collaboration & communities
Manuals, tutorials, training
www.awl.com/DTUI
U.S. Library of Congress
• Scholars, Journalists, Citizens
• Teachers, Students
Visible Human Explorer (NLM)
• Doctors
• Surgeons
• Researchers
• Students
NASA Environmental Data
• Scientists
• Farmers
• Land planners
• Students
Bureau of the Census
• Economists, Policy
makers, Journalists
• Teachers, Students
NSF Digital Government Initiative
• Find what you need
• Understand what you Find
Census,
NCHS,
BLS, EIA,
NASS, SSA
www.ils.unc.edu/govstat/
International Children’s Digital Libary
www.icdlbooks.org
Zooming User Interfaces
www.cs.umd.edu/jazz
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/datelens
ZUI: Pocket PhotoMesa
www.windsorinterfaces.com
PhotoMesa
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/photomesa
South Africa’s Fire Early Warning System
End users
ESKOM
Disaster
Management Unit
Advanced Fire Information System
(AFIS) wamis.co.za
Weather Service
Forest Department
Direct Broadcast
Receiving Station
Satellite Application
Centre (SAC)
South Africa
E-mail Alerts
Rapid Response
System
SMS/Text messages
University of
Maryland
Diane Davies & Suresh Kumar, UMD - GEOG
Web Fire Mapper
maps.geog.umd.edu
Advanced Fire Information System (AFIS)
• MODIS Image
• Fire Archive
• Distance
Calculator
• Identify layer
attributes
• Print maps
• Scale
• Pan and Zoom
• Overview Maps
• Slimmed
down for
dialup
Information Visualization
The eye…
the window of the soul,
is the principal means
by which the central sense
can most completely and
abundantly appreciate
the infinite works of nature.
Leonardo da Vinci
(1452 - 1519)
Using Vision to Think
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Visual bandwidth is enormous
• Human perceptual skills are remarkable
• Trend, cluster, gap, outlier...
• Color, size, shape, proximity...
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• Human image storage is fast and vast
Opportunities
• Spatial layouts & coordination
• Information visualization
• Scientific visualization & simulation
• Telepresence & augmented reality
• Virtual environments
Information Visualization: Definition
Compact graphical presentation
AND
user interface for
manipulating large numbers of items (102 - 106),
possibly extracted from far larger datasets.
Enables users to make
discoveries,
decisions, or
explanations
about
patterns (trend, cluster, gap, outlier...),
groups of items, or
individual items.
Information Visualization: US Research Centers
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Xerox PARC
• 3-D cone trees, perspective wall, spiral calendar
• table lens, hyperbolic trees, document lens
Univ. of Maryland
• dynamic queries, range sliders, starfields,
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treemaps, timeboxes, zoombars
tight coupling, dynamic pruning, lifelines
IBM, Microsoft, AT&T
Georgia Tech, MIT Media Lab, CMU
Univ. of Wisconsin, Minnesota,
Calif-Berkeley
Pacific Northwest National Labs
Highway Incidents on Baltimore Beltway
(Fredikson, Plaisant, North & Shneiderman, 1999)
Large Shared Displays
Information Visualization: Design Guidelines
Direct manipulation strategies
• Visual presentation of query components
• Visual presentation of results
• Rapid, incremental and reversible actions
• Selection by pointing (not typing)
• Immediate and continuous feedback
• Reduces errors
• Encourages exploration
www.mayaviz.com
Visualization Toolkits
www.ilog.com
Information Visualization: Mantra
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Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Overview, zoom & filter, details-on-demand
Information Visualization: Data Types
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1-D Linear
2-D Map
3-D World
Multi-Dim
Document Lens, SeeSoft, Info Mural, Value Bars
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Temporal
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Perspective Wall, LifeLines, Lifestreams,
Project Managers, DataSpiral
Tree
Network
Cone/Cam/Hyperbolic, TreeBrowser, Treemap
GIS, ArcView, PageMaker, Medical imagery
CAD, Medical, Molecules, Architecture
Parallel Coordinates, Spotfire, XGobi, Visage,
Influence Explorer, TableLens, DEVise
Netmap, netViz, SeeNet, Butterfly, Multi-trees
(Online Library of Information Visualization Environments)
otal.umd.edu/Olive
Interactive Maps
Micromaps
Dan Carr, Susan Peirson,
Statistical Computing &
Statistical Graphics Newsletter
(Dec. 96)
Ymap: Dynamic Queries on Maps
DataMap: (Qing Li and Chris North) Virginia Tech
Dynamic Choropleth Maps - DCMaps
William Smith (EPA) http://www.turboperl.com/dcmaps.html
Conditioned Choropleth Maps
http://www.geovista.psu.edu/grants/dg-qg/feature_old2.htm
GeoVista
(Gahegan & MacEachren)
www.geovistastudio.psu.edu
CommonGIS
(Andrienko, G. and N.)
www.commongis.com
Treemap: view large trees with node values
+ Space filling
+ Space limited
+ Color coding
+ Size coding
 Requires learning
TreeViz (Mac, Johnson, 1992)
NBA-Tree(Sun, Turo, 1993)
Winsurfer (Teittinen, 1996)
Diskmapper (Windows, Micrologic)
Treemap3 (Windows, UMd, 2001)
(Shneiderman, ACM Trans. on Graphics, 1992)
Treemap: Stock market, clustered by industry
Treemap: Newsmap
www.hivegroup.com
Treemap: Product catalogs
www.hivegroup.com
Treemap: Daily Production Reports
691 wells grouped by Asset team.
Size = barrels of oil produced per day
Color = “lost” oil (difference between actual and expected)
PairTrees: Treemap and Choropleth Map
US Death rates by disease and state (Mockup)
Hierarchical Clustering Explorer
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hce/
Information Visualization: Tasks
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Overview
Zoom
Filter
Gain an overview of the entire collection
Zoom in on items of interest
Filter out uninteresting items
Details-on-demand
Select an item or group and
get details when needed
Relate
View relationships among items
History
Keep a history of actions to support
undo, replay, and progressive refinement
Extract
Allow extraction of sub-collections and
of the query parameters
Challenges: GIS & InfoViz
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Dealing with large volume of data
• Also problem of missing data, uncertainty
Combining visual with textual representations
Collaborative exploration
• Environments for publishing results, sharing knowledge
• Large shared displays
Integrating with data mining
Specialized toolkits and development tools
Addressing Universal Usability
Evaluation: Empirical studies, observations, case studies
AudioMap: Sonification
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Motivation: improve vision-impaired users’ access to geo-referenced
statistical data
Approach: interactive sonification
• Tie spatial sound to areas to create a virtual map
• Data-to-sound mapping: Piano pitch -> value.
• Interactions for auditory information seeking
• Gist (overview): spatial sweeping
• Navigation: state-by-state exploration
• Details-on-demand: name & value
spoken on request
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Pilot user study (9 sighted users)
Controlled study (48 sighted users)
Participant observation (2 blind users)
Challenges: Make a Better World
• Science & Medicine
• E-Commerce & Finance
• Digital Government
• Agriculture & Environment
• Transportation & Housing
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Inspirational Muse
For the
New
Computing
MIT Press, 2003
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil
Upcoming Events
January 17-18, 2005
SPIE Visual Data Analysis Symposium
San Jose, CA
www.infovis.org
January 27-29, 2005
Asia Pacific Symposium on Information Visualization
Sydney, Australia
www.cs.usyd.edu.au/~visual/apvis/
July 2005
9th International Conference on
Information Visualisation - London
www.graphicslink.demon.co.uk/IV05/
For More Information
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Visit the HCIL website for 350 papers & info on videos
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil
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Conferences & resources: www.infovis.org
See Chapter 14 on Info Visualization
Shneiderman, B. and Plaisant, C., Designing the User Interface:
Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction:
Fourth Edition (April 2004) www.awl.com/DTUI
Edited Collections:
Card, S., Mackinlay, J., and Shneiderman, B. (1999)
Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think
Bederson, B. and Shneiderman, B. (2003)
The Craft of Information Visualization: Readings and Reflections
For More Information
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Treemaps
• HiveGroup: www.hivegroup.com
• Smartmoney: www.smartmoney.com/marketmap
• HCIL Treemap 4.1: www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/treemap
Spotfire: www.spotfire.com
TimeSearcher: www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher
Hierarchical Clustering Explorer:
www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/hce