SIMS 247: Information Visualization and Presentation Marti Hearst

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SIMS 247 Information Visualization and
PresentationMarti Hearst
Feb 11, 2004    
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Today

• High-interaction Graphics
• Brushing, linking, highlighting
• Animation
• Focus on usability studies

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Standard Techniques

• Its often hard to beat
• Line graphs, bar charts
• Scatterplots (or Scatterplot Matrix)
• Tables
• A Darwinian view of visualizations
• Only the fittest survive
• We are in a period of great experimentation
  eventually it will be clear what works and what
  dies out.
• A bright spot
• Enhancing the old techniques with interactivity
• Example Spotfire
• Adds interactivity, color highlighting, zooming
  to scatterplots
• Example TableLens / Eureka
• Adds interactivity and length cues to tables

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Brushing Linking

• LinkingVisually indicating which parts of one
  data display correspond to that of another
• BrushingAllowing the user to move a region
  (brush) around the data display to highlight
  groups of data points.
• Usability issues
• Selection, de-selection, setting values,
  appropriate widgets

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Brushing and Linking

• At least two things must be linked together to
  allow for brushing
• select a subset of points
• see the role played by this subset of points in
  one or more other views
• Highlighting is key
• Example systems
• Ahlberg Sheidermans IVEE (Spotfire)
• Graham Wills EDV system

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Linking types of assist behavior to position
played (from Eick Wills 95)
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Baseball dataScatterplots and histograms and
bars (from Eick Wills 95)
how long in majors
select high salaries
avg career HRs vs avg career hits (batting
ability)
avg assists vs avg putouts (fielding ability)
distribution of positions played
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What can be learned from interaction with this
baseball data?

• Seems impossible to earn a high salary in the
  first three years
• High salaried players have a bimodal distribution
  (peaking around 7 13 yrs)
• Hits/Year a better indicator of salary than
  HR/Year
• High paid outlier with low HR and medium
  hits/year. Reason person is player-coach
• There seem to be two differentiated groups in the
  put-outs/assists category (but not correlated
  with salary) Why?

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Dynamic Queries

• Selecting value ranges of variables via controls
  with real time feedback in the display

• Principles
• Visual presentation of querys components
• Visual presentation of results
• Rapid, incremental, and reversible control

• Selection by pointing, not typing
• Immediate and continuous feedback
• Support browsing
• Details on demand

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Dynamic Queries

• Tight coupling
• Query components are interrelated in ways that
  preserve display invariants, reveal state of
  system
• Output of queries can be easily used as input to
  produce other queries. Eliminate distinction
  between commands/queries/input and
  results/tables/output
• Example Interactive Scatterplots
• Multiple Names
• Starfield, IVEE, Spotfire, HomeFinder

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Interaction with Scatterplots
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Interaction with Scatterplots
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Interaction with Scatterplots
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Example
Devise Jobs to Skill Matching
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Home Finder Text
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Home Finder Map
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Pros Cons

• Quick, easy, safe, playful
• Good for novices experts
• For exploration of large data sets

• Simple queries only
• So many controls

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More Brushing Linking Examples
Linking altitude to grass and grain types in
Scottish Districts

• Districts of the city of Dublin showing areas
  with high levels of average income

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Examples

• Periodic Table of the ElementsAdjust properties
  with sliders on the bottom to highlight matching
  elements. (Ahlberg,Williamson, Shneiderman 92)

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Examples

• DynaMapCervical cancer rates from 1950-1970 -
  modify year, state, demographics

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Examples
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Animation

• The quality or condition of being alive, active,
  spirited, or vigorous (dictionary.com)
• A dynamic visual statement that evolves through
  movement or change in the display
• creating the illusion of change by rapidly
  displaying a series of single frames (Roncarelli
  1988).

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We Use Animation to

• Tell stories / scenarios cartoons
• Illustrate dynamic process / simulation
• Create a character / an agent
• Navigate through virtual spaces
• Draw attention
• Delight

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Animation Examples

• Secret Lives of Numbers Viz
• http//www.turbulence.org/Works/nums/applet.html

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Cartoons in UIs
http//www.ok-cancel.com/archives/week_2004_02_06.
html
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Cartoon-Style Animation

• Main Reference
• Chang Unger, Animation From Cartoons to the
  User Interface, UIST 93
• Main ideas
• Visual change in the interface can be sudden and
  unexpected
• User can lose track of causal connection between
  events
• Classic example closing/opening windwos
• This is now remedied via animation in standard
  windows interfaces
• People have no trouble understanding transitions
  in animated cartoons
• They grow and deform smoothly
• They provide visual cues of what is happening
  before, during, and after a transition.

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Cartoon Animation in User Interface Design

• User Cartooning Principles to Enhance Animations
• Replace sudden transitions with smooth ones
• Some Principles
• Solidity (squash and stretch)
• Motion blur
• Dissolves
• Arrival and departure (from off-screen)
• Exaggeration
• Dont just mimic relatity
• Anticipation
• Follow through
• Reinforcement
• Slow in and slow out
• Arcs
• Follow through

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Cartoons vs. UIs

• What is different?
• UIs are interactive
• Purpose Fun vs. getting work done

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Application using Animation Gnutellavision

• Animated Exploration of Graphs with Radial
  Layout, Ka-Ping Yee, Danyel Fisher, Rachna
  Dhamija, Marti Hearst, in IEEE Infovis Symposium,
  San Deigo, CA, October 2001.
• Visualization of Peer-to-Peer Network
• Hosts (with color for status and size for number
  of files)
• Nodes with closer network distance from focus on
  inner rings
• Queries shown can trace queries

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Layout - Illustration

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Animation in Gnutellavision

• Goal of animation is to help maintain context
  of nodes and general orientation of user during
  refocus
• Transition Paths
• Linear interpolation of polar coordinates
• Node moves in arc not straight line
• Moves along circle if not changing levels (like
  great circles on earth)
• Spirals in or out to next ring

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Animation (continued)

• Transition constraints
• Orientation of transition to minimize rotational
  travel
• (Move former parent away from new focus in same
  orientation)
• Avoid cross-over of edges
• (to allow users to keep track of which is which)
   
• Animation timing
• Slow in Slow out timing (allows users to better
  track movement)
• Small usability study
• Participants preferred with animation for larger
  graphs

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Transition Constraint - Orientation

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Transition Constraint - Order
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Evaluating Animation in UIs

• Thomas and Demczuk, Evaluation of Animation
  Effects to Improve Indirect Manipulation, First
  Australasian User Interface Conference, January
  31 - February 03, 2000
• Examining animation effects to provide visual
  cues to highlight information about changes that
  come about indirectly.
• Direct manipulation when there is a
  straightforward mapping from user actions to
  visible changes
• Some changes have no obvious mapping or require
  too much precision
• Problem
• Pre and post-positions of graphical objects
  during an indirect manipulation alignment
  problem.

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Thomas Demczuk Study

• Addressing two problems
• Confusion caused by sudden visual change
• Difficulty in predicting final result of a
  complex change
• Figure 1
• Not obvious which objects in the top correspond
  to the ones below
• Approach
• Cartooning animation techniques

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Thomas Demczuk Study
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Thomas Demczuk Study
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Thomas Demczuk Study

• Three new visual effects
• Telltale objects are animated as if one of the
  corners is begin dragged by a mouse while the
  remainder of the object stays behind
• Shorter than earlier work only 10 of its
  distance
• Color used to cue the original position of the
  graphical object
• Wiggle cue the original position of the object

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Thomas Demczuk Study

• Method
• Measure participants ability to remember the
  placement of the graphical objects
• 4-8 objects moved after 5 seconds using one of
• Telltale
• Color
• Wiggle
• No feedback
• Participant then draws original positions
• Hypotheses
• Animation color cues will help Ps remember
  original positions compared to no feedback
• Ps will prefer tasks with visual cues

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Thomas Demczuk Study

• Results

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Thomas Demczuk Study

• Results
• Animation cues helped task
• Ps preferred animation cues
• Negative response to the task with no cues

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Analying Animation in UIs

• C. Gonzales, Does Animation In User Interfaces
  Improve Decision Making? CHI 96
• Improve the definition of animation
• A series of varying images presented dynamically
  according to user actions in ways tha thelp the
  user to perceive a continuous change over time
  and develop a more appropriate mental model of
  the task.
• Literature Review
• There is little theoretical or empirical work
  about how to design, use, and evaluation
  animation for UIs

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Analyzing Animation in UIs

• C. Gonzales, Does Animation In User Interfaces
  Improve Decision Making? CHI 96
• Improve the definition of animation
• A series of varying images presented dynamically
  according to user actions in ways tha thelp the
  user to perceive a continuous change over time
  and develop a more appropriate mental model of
  the task.
• Literature Review
• There is little theoretical or empirical work
  about how to design, use, and evaluation
  animation for UIs

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Gonzales Study

• 89 participants (undergrads)
• 2 task domains
• Apartment finding (20 alternatives, 11
  attributes)
• Physics problem (compare sunken floating
  objects)
• 2 Types of Image
• Realistic
• Abstract
• 2 Transition Types
• Gradual
• Abrupt
• 2 Interactivity Types
• Parallel
• Sequential

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Gonzales Study
Photo from a 3D model
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Gonzales Study
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Gonzales Study
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Gonzales Study

• Method
• Each session 30-40 minutes
• Written instructions and task descriptions
• Objective measures
• Time
• Accuracy
• Subjective measures
• Ease of use
• Enjoyment

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Gonzales Study

• Results
• Animation with realistic images more accurate,
  faster, and easier than abstract
• Animation with graduate transitions more accurate
  and easier than abrupt (not faster)
• Animation with parallel control more accurate and
  more enjoyable. This interacted with task type.
• Home finding easier, more enjoyable, more
  accurate than physics tasks
• Overall conclusions
• Decision making performance is highly contingent
  on the properies of the animation UI and the
  task.

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Animation in Instruction

• Morrison Tversky
• Julie B. Morrison, Barbara Tversky The
  (in)effectiveness of animation in instruction CHI
  01 extended abstracts.
• Tversky, Morrison, and Betrancourt, Animation
  can it facilitate? IJHCS 57, 247-262, 2001.
• Found animation did not aid (nor harm)
  instruction
• Potential reasons
• Hard to perceive (too fast/complex)
• May be comprehended discretely
• Lacking appropriate interactivity
• They point out that studies that show animation
  benefits often have extra info over the diagrams
• My question if the diagrams have everything the
  animations do, maybe they are just slow
  animations?

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Animation in Instruction

• Stasko et al.
• Did a series of studies on algorithm animation
• Intially did not find effects either way
• Changed the study
• Kehoe, Colleen, Stasko, John and Taylor, Ashley,
  "Rethinking the Evaluation of Algorithm
  Animations as Learning Aids An Observational
  Study", International Journal of Human-Computer
  Studies, Vol. 54, No. 2, February 2001, pp.
  265-284
• From lab/exam-oriented to homework-oriented
• Rich observations of how different tools were
  used together
• Perhaps a more appropriate application of viz
• For understanding of complicated steps in
  binomial heap algorithms
• Positive results
• Best when animation and explanation are
  simultaneous
• Students need to be able to step through, control
  speed
• Students were more accurate and enjoyed the work
  more with animation.

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Next Time

• Multidimensional Visualization
• Readings
• TableLens
• Parallel Coordinates
• Intro paper
• Example of usage
• Comparative Evaluation of Three Systems