Abstract. Teaching InfoVis is a challenge because it is a new and growing field. This paper describes the results of a teaching survey based on the information given by the attendees of Dagstuhl Seminar 07221. It covers several aspects of offered InfoVis courses that range from different kinds of study materials to practical exercises. We have reproduced the discussion during the seminar and added our own experiences. We hope that this paper can serve as an interesting and helpful source for current and future InfoVis teachers. 1

3D web software visualisation has always been expensive, special purpose and hard to program. In this thesis we present a framework for evaluating software visualisation media. The framework is then applied in the evaluation of the new “eXtensible 3D ” (X3D) open standard for web 3D graphics, to determine how suitable X3D is for use in a web-based software visualisation environment. Our evaluation is based on our experience of replicating a representative sample of software visualisation techniques which are common throughout the software visualisation literature in X3D. The evaluation finds that a large range of software visualisation techniques can be implemented in X3D, however, the development of these visualisations is very time consuming and no specific software visualisation features exist. Acknowledgments I would first just like to say that my Mum and Dad and have been great support over the past few years in completing this degree and without them the struggle

Abstract—A great corpus of studies reports empirical evidence of how information visualization supports comprehension and analysis of data. The benefits of visualization for synchronous group knowledge work, however, have not been addressed extensively. Anecdotal evidence and use cases illustrate the benefits of synchronous collaborative information visualization, but very few empirical studies have rigorously examined the impact of visualization on group knowledge work. We have consequently designed and conducted an experiment in which we have analyzed the impact of visualization on knowledge sharing in situated work groups. Our experimental study consists of evaluating the performance of 131 subjects (all experienced managers) in groups of 5 (for a total of 26 groups), working together on a real-life knowledge sharing task. We compare (1) the control condition (no visualization provided), with two visualization supports: (2) optimal and (3) suboptimal visualization (based on a previous survey). The facilitator of each group was asked to populate the provided interactive visual template with insights from the group, and to organize the contributions according to the group consensus. We have evaluated the results through both objective and subjective measures. Our statistical analysis clearly shows that interactive visualization has a statistically significant, objective and positive impact on the outcomes of knowledge sharing, but that the subjects seem not to be aware of this. In particular, groups supported by visualization achieved higher productivity, higher quality of outcome and greater knowledge gains. No statistically significant results could be found between an optimal and a suboptimal visualization though (as classified by the pre-experiment survey). Subjects also did not seem to be aware of the benefits that the visualizations provided as no difference between the visualization and the

In this paper, we examine reviews for the entries to the 2009 Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Symposium Challenge. By analyzing these reviews we gained a better understanding of what is important to our reviewers, both visualization researchers and professional analysts. This is a bottom-up approach to the development of heuristics to use in the evaluation of visual analytic environments. The meta-analysis and the results are presented in this paper.

As the information visualisation (infovis) community matures, the evaluation of information visualisation techniques is becoming more of a requirement and less of an optional extra. Unfortunately, the term evaluation means different things to different people. Simply encouraging “evaluation ” is too general and imprecise. There is a need for clarification as to what kind of evaluation is expected at what stage. When reporting their work, authors should clearly distinguish between exploratory, predictive, formative, and summative evaluation.