The top five problems that motivated my work [data visualisation]

Abstract

T heresa-Marie Rhyne has lately been organizing efforts for a number of researchers to produce lists of top visualization problems, and I am flattered to be included. A recent Visualization Viewpoints column (see the July/August 2004 IEEE CG&A) featured Chris Johnson's excellent list, and now it's my turn. Since the May 1999 VisFiles column 1 already describes my list of the top ten problems that will drive future visualization work, this Visualization Viewpoints column is a look back at the top five problems that drove my own work developing Vis5D, Cave5D, and VisAD (see the "Vis5D, Cave5D, and VisAD" sidebar). Some of these problems are high-minded and some are grubby and gritty. This is the mix of problems that I learned from Verner Suomi, the founder of the Space Science and Engineering Center where I do my visualization work. Suomi was literally the inventor of weather satellites. Among many other technical accomplishments, he held the patent on the spin-scan radiometer, which was the basis for the geostationary satellites that until recently produced the cloud animations we see on TV weather shows. He also lobbied the US congress for the funds to develop these satellites and was heavily involved in building the prototypes. He was a visionary, a politician, and what my father would have called a "dirty-fingered engineer ." I hope these problems reflect this combination of concerns that lead to useful change. I start at number five, and count down to the most important problem.

Geospatial spreadsheets with microscale air quality visualization and synchronization for supporting multiple-scenario visual collaboration

“…Several issues have been discussed in previous studies (Hibbard 2004, Johnson 2004, Chen 2005, North 2006, Thomas and Cook 2006). The discussions of visual analysis (Weaver et al 2007) and collaborative visualization (Hutanua et al 2006, Taesombut et al 2006, Chen et al 2008, Isenberg and Fisher 2009, Wigdor et al 2009, Li et al 2010, Isenberg et al 2011 continue to evolve.…”

“…Recently, SciVis tools such as Vis5D (Hibbard et al 1994, Hibbard 2004 have been developed to support local or regional air quality (AQ) decisions. However, unlike local to regional scale air pollution, few microscale AQ 2512…”

“…MacEachren and Brewer (2004) proposed four types of collaborative tasks for knowledge construction: explore, analyse, synthesize and present, which are similar to VA. Xu et al (2011) identified six dimensions of geocollaboration: problem context, collaborative task, commonality of perspective, spatiotemporal context, interaction characteristics and mediation, and they tried to implement these six dimensions in practice. Although they did not use the term VA, these studies are closely related to VA. Further sophisticated discussions related to VA can be found in the series of 'Visualization Viewpoints' articles (Hibbard 2004, Johnson 2004, North 2006. Many collaborative virtual geographic environment frameworks and associated visual products have been developed to support collaborative decision-making processes.…”

Création et évaluation d’interfaces visuelles interactives à partir de services web

“…La réactivité correspond au temps de réponse du système suite à une action de l'utilisateur. Neilsen (1993) indique que même si ce temps doit être le plus court possible, dans la réalité, cela est rarement le cas, ce qui est pourtant un défi majeur (Hibbard, 2004). La rétroactivité permet à l'utilisateur de connaître l'état du système suite à une interaction (Norman, 2002).…”

Subjective Quantification of Perceptual Interactions among some 2D Scientific Visualization Methods

“…Exploratory visualization methods allow them also, in a first approximation, to qualitatively assess the validity of their experimental and data gathering methods. At this stage, visualization is merely a tool to help scientists think about their problem [18].…”