This article provides a taxonomy of distortion-oriented techniques which demonstrates clearly their underly- ng relationships. A unified theory is presented to reveal their roots and origins. Issues relating to the implementation and performance of these techniques are also discussed

Dynamic queries are a novel approach to information seeking that may enable users to cope with information overload. They allow users to see an overview of the database, rapidly (100 msec updates) explore and conveniently filter out unwanted information. Users fly through information spaces by incrementally adjusting a query (with sliders, buttons, and other filters) while continuously viewing the changing results. Dynamic queries on the chemical table of elements, computer directories, and a real estate database were built and tested in three separate exploratory experiments. These results show statistically significant performance improvements and user enthusiasm more commonly seen with video games. Widespread application seems possible but research issues remain in database and display algorithms, and user interface design. Challenges include methods for rapidly displaying and changing many points, colors, and areas; multidimensional pointing; incorporation of sound and visual displ...

LifeLines provide a general visualization environment for personal histories that can be applied to medical and court records, professional histories and other types of biographical data. A one screen overview shows multiple facets of the records. Aspects, for example medical conditions or legal cases, are displayed as individual time lines, while icons indicate discrete events, such as physician consultations or legal reviews. Line color and thickness illustrate relationships or significance, rescaling tools and filters allow users to focus on part of the information. LifeLines reduce the chances of missing information, facilitate spotting anomalies and trends, streamline access to details, while remaining tailorable and easily transferable between applications. The paper describes the use of LifeLines for youth records of the Maryland Department of Juvenile Justice and also for medical records. User's feedback was collected using a Visual Basic prototype for the youth record. Techniq...

This paper describes an experiment comparing two methods for viewing hierarchically clustered networks. Traditional full-zoom techniques provide details of only the current level of the hierarchy. In contrast fisheye views, generated by the "variable zoom" algorithm described in this paper, provides information about higher levels as well. Subjects using both viewing methods were given problem solving tasks requiring them to navigate a network, in this case a simulated telephone system, and to reroute links in it. Results suggest that the greater context provided by fisheye views significantly improved a user's performance of the tasks. They were quicker to complete their task, and they made fewer unnecessary navigational steps through the hierarchy. This validation of fisheye views is important for designers of interfaces to complicated monitoring systems, such as control rooms for supervisory control and data acquisition systems, where efficient human performance is often critical. However, control room operators remained concerned about the size and visibility tradeoffs between the fine detail provided by full-zooms, and the global context supplied by fisheye views. Specific interface features are required to reconcile the differences.

Information visualizations must allow users to browse information spaces and focus quickly on items of interest. Being able to see some representation of the entire information space provides an initial gestalt overview and gives context to support browsing and search tasks. However, the limited number of pixels on the screen constrain the information bandwidth and make it difficult to completely display large information spaces. The Information Mural is a two-dimensional, reduced representation of an entire information space that fits entirely within a display window or screen. The mural creates a miniature version of the information space using visual attributes such as grayscale shading, intensity, color, and pixel size, along with anti-aliased compression techniques. Information Murals can be used as stand-alone visualizations or in global navigational views. We have built several prototypes to demonstrate the use of Information Murals in visualization applications; subject matter ...

We present a novel tree browser that builds on the conventional node link tree diagrams. It adds dynamic rescaling of branches of the tree to best fit the available screen space, optimized camera movement, and the use of preview icons summarizing the topology of the branches that cannot be expanded. In addition, it includes integrated search and filter functions. This paper reflects on the evolution of the design and highlights the principles that emerged from it. A controlled experiment showed benefits for navigation to already previously visited nodes and estimation of overall tree topology.

The focus of this article is to develop a map display for to stack in the dark, without knowing what stacks that information retrieval. Through an examination of relationships among visual displays, information retrieval, and browsing, advantages of visual displays for informa-tion retrieval are characterized as (1) the ability to con-we have walked through. We can get a few books each time and walk out of the library to see if the book we are searching for is among them. If not, we have to walk vey a large amount of information in a limited space, (2) in again, based on our knowledge and our previous experi-the potential to reveal semantic relationships of terms ence, to a location where we hope the book would be. In and documents, and (3) the facilitation of browsing and perceptual inferences on retrieval interfaces. These ad-vantages are further demonstrated through a map dis-play generated by a neural network’s self-organizing al-this situation, success in finding a book greatly depends on whether we can walk to the right place in the dark (to generate a good query), and whether we know how to gorithm. The map display detects complex relationships adjust our locations until we get to the right place (to among given documents, and reveals the relationships modify queries interactively). through a spatial arrangement of terms abstracted from Can we turn on the light for such a library? Can we the documents. The map display also provides inter-active tools to allow the user to interact with the underlydevelop some visible cues in our retrieval systems so that ing information. Examples of the map displays show that we can use our perception for information seeking in such map displays can be used both as an overview tool the digital environment? Answers to these questions may and an access or exploration tool, and the map displays will likely increase the amount of information that the user is willing to browse. reside in the recent advance of information technology. ‘‘Information processing has been evolving from numeri-cal computation to character handling, and now to visual information processing’ ’ (Kunii, 1989). As a result, visu-

The literature on information visualization establishes the usability of interfaces with an overview of the information space, but for zoomable user interfaces, results are mixed. We compare zoomable user interfaces with and without an overview to understand the navigation patterns and usability of these interfaces. Thirty-two subjects solved navigation and browsing tasks on two maps. We found no difference between interfaces in subjects ’ ability to solve tasks correctly. Eighty percent of the subjects preferred the interface with an overview, stating that it supported navigation and helped keep track of their position on the map. However, subjects were faster with the interface without an overview when using one of the two maps. We conjecture that this difference was due to the organization of that map in multiple levels, which rendered the overview unnecessary by providing richer navigation cues through semantic zooming. The combination of that map and the interface without an overview also improved subjects ’ recall of objects on the map. Subjects who switched between the overview and the detail windows used more time, suggesting that integration of overview and detail windows adds complexity and requires additional mental and motor effort.

This paper presents the Snap user interface and basic conceptual model and then reports on two studies on constructing and operating coordinated visualizations

In current windowing environments, individual windows are treated independently, making it difficult for users to coordinate information across multiple windows. While coordinated multi-window strategies are increasingly used in visualization and web user interfaces, designs are inflexible and haphazard. The space of such linkedwindow strategies is not well understood and largely unexplored. This paper presents a taxonomy of coordinations, identifies important components, and reviews example interfaces. This 2x3 taxonomy provides guidelines for designers of applications, user interface toolkits, and window managers. We hope to encourage construction of generalized, end-user programmable, robust, multiple-window coordination capabilities. KEYWORDS User Interface, Coordination, Taxonomy, Multiple Window Strategies, Information Visualization,Window Management INTRODUCTION Users are dealing with increasing quantity, variety, and interrelated-ness of information. User tasks are becoming...