Architectures to make Simple Visualisations Simple Systems

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Architectures to makeSimple VisualisationsSimple
Systems

• Alan Dix
• Lancaster University and aQtive
• Russell Beale
• Birmingham University and aQtive
• Andy Wood
• aQtive

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outline

• simple visualisation
  and dancing histograms
• onCue and appropriate
  intelligence
• pieTrees
• deeper inside onCue - Qbits

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dancinghistograms
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simple visualisation

• AVI98 paper (Geoff Ellis Alan Dix)
• key concept
• familiar paper representations
• (can be domain specific)
• add interactivity
• surprisingly powerful

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stacked histograms
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dancing histogram
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doing it

• applet version
• histogram 1 day
• axes - another day!!!

• full application ?

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onCue
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onCue

• context sensitive
• link to resources
• on the web
• on the desktop
• on the intranet
• component based framework
• easily extensible

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onCue in action
histograms
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kinds of data

• short text search engines
• single word thesaurus, spell check
• names directory services
• post codes maps, local info
• numbers SumIt! (add them up)
• custom order , cust ref ...

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appropriate intelligence

• (a) be useful when it is right
• (b) be right often enough to be useful
• (c) not cause problems when it is wrong

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how it works
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how it works
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how it works
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how it works
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dancing histograms in onCue

• table recogniser (½ day initially)
• turn applet into onCue service (½ day)
• usable Qbit in onCue
• later
• improved recogniser (another day)
• MS Excel service using same recogniser

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pieTree
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pieTree

• simple data pie chart
• hierarchical data exploding pie
• (info at leaves)
• info on nodes too ???
• file space usage
• web site log files

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web stats

• corporate/ 4000 9000
• info.html 3000
• press.html 2000
• community/ 3000 8000
• user.html 2000
• research.html 1000
• developer.html 2000
• product/ 2000 8000
• onCue/ 2000 4000
• online.html 1000
• download.html 1000
• vfridge/ 1000
• support/ 1000

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top level - pie chart

• corporate/ 4000 9000
• community/ 3000 8000
• product/ 2000 8000

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drilling

• corporate/ 4000 9000
• community/ 3000 8000
• product/ 2000 8000
• onCue/ 2000 4000
• vfridge/ 1000
• support/ 1000

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deeper

• corporate/ 4000 9000
• community/ 3000 8000
• product/ 2000 8000
• onCue/ 2000 4000
• online.html 1000
• download.html 1000
• vfridge/ 1000
• support/ 1000

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root hits

• / 3000 28000
• corporate/ 4000 9000
• community/ 3000 8000
• product/ 2000 8000

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pieTree - pros and cons

• similar to pie charts
• equal area / equal value
• display inertia
• temporal fusion

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recogniser heuristics

• first element in each line a number (like du)
• last number in each line a number (like web log)
• some items prefixes of others
• (e.g. "/exercises" and "/exercises/images")
• some lines indented more than others
• numbers for higher levels gt lower levels

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deep inside
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what happens inside

• aQtiveSpace
• component framework
• Qbits
• bit like beans, but different
• mixed initiative
• external and dynamic configuration

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Qbit nodes
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advantages

• external linkage
• neither Qbit needs to know about the other
• mixed initiative styles
• data-driven - using set/listen
• demand driven - using get/give

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underlying theory

• status-event analysis
• scope
• includes human and computer
• power
• equal footing for status and event phenomena
• implementation
• understand status representation

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more

• visualisation
• http//www.hiraeth.com/alan/topics/vis
• onCue
• http//www.aQtive.com