A framework for unifying presentation space

Abstract

Making effective use of the available display space has long been a fundamental issue in user interface design. We live in a time of rapid advances in available CPU power and memory. However, the common sizes of our computational display spaces have only minimally increased or in some cases, such as hand held devices, actually decreased. In addition, the size and scope of the information spaces we wish to explore are also expanding. Representing vast amounts of information on our relatively small screens has become increasingly problematic and has been associated with problems in navigation, interpretation and recognition. User interface research has proposed several differing presentation approaches to address these problems. These methods create displays that vary considerably, visually and algorithmically. We present a unified framework that provides a way of relating seemingly distinct methods, facilitating the inclusion of more than one presentation method in a single interface. Furthermore, it supports extrapolation between the presentation methods it describes. Of particular interest are the presentation possibilities that exist in the ranges between various distortion presentations, magnified insets and detail-in-context presentations, and between detail-incontext presentations and a full-zooming environment. This unified framework offers a geometric presentation library in which presentation variations are available independently of the mode of graphic representation. The intention is to promote the ease of exploration and experimentation into the use of varied presentation combinations.

A Study on Dual-Scale Data Charts

“…Several overview articles discuss varying taxonomies and software frameworks for focus-and-context displays [6,9,18,20,23,24]. Leung and Apperley [20] distinguish between distortion-oriented and non-distortion-oriented techniques.…”

“…Generally focus-in-context methods are believed to reduce cognitive effort needed to integrate contextual information compared to windowing or zooming techniques [6,13,36]. Cockburn et al [9] summarize empirical studies which targeted comprehension issues with focus-and-context techniques in information spaces.…”

“…Among these, linear transformation functions-or constant magnification functions-are the most common. More complex transformation functions have been used such as logarithmic scales or fisheye distortions [6]. In this article, we are interested in DualScale transformation functions, which we define as follows: T is a Dual-Scale transformation function if:…”

“…However, it is C 0 , which yields a visually continuous but visually non-integrated connection between the regions D 1 and D 2 . This means that the chart is continuous but exhibits an abrupt change in scale, which can potentially make it difficult to cognitively relate information in both regions [6,13,36].…”

Formalizing Emphasis in Information Visualization

“…For example, when a visualization exploits highlighting to emphasize some data points, differences in the prominence of the data points arise from variations in color, or more specifically hue, a powerful visual variable. While emphasis effects in visualization can be created using any visual variable [CM84,Ber83,Mac86], Infovis researchers have often focused on distortion and magnification techniques, e.g., [CM01,LA94,Kea98,PCS95,SA82]. These techniques create emphasis effects by manipulating magnification (i.e., by simultaneously manipulating the visual variables size and position) where differences in the prominence of data points arise from variations in magnification.…”