Sunday, September 18, 2011

Reaction:The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations

The paper gives a starting point that will aid the designers of advanced graphical user interfaces. According to the author, the data is classified into a taxonomy of seven different types and the tasks that needs to be performed is again divided into seven types.The author asserts that a better design can be developed to visualize data by taking advantage of the under utilized human perceptual abilities. The article stresses on the visual seeking mantra of overview first, zoom. filter and details on demand.

 Overall the article has been systematically organized by explaining the various data types, its advantages and disadvantages. This is ensued by briefly explaining each component of the visual seeking mantra. It is a very good read for designers of an Information Visualization tool. The bifocal display representation and the filter flow model for dynamic querying was a very good piece of information. According to me, The Visual seeking mantra, if applied in a prudent way will help in increasing the insight of the end user in optimum number of steps.

Questions:
Are the steps 'details on demand' and 'extract' related? I was not able to infer a very clear distinction between them.

1 comments:

Pradeep said...

They are related in the sense that an Extract generally follows details on demand (to select the sub-collection).Details on demand does not allow you to get a local copy of the data. But an Extract does.