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Interactions

Need​

  • Larger data, there is simply too much to show in a coherent manner. Hard for people to process
  • Helps us address that challenge

What is​

Can be captured and measured by the response time

  • 0.1 sec - animation, visual continuity, sliders
  • 1 sec - system response, conversation break
  • 10 sec - cognitive response

Challenges​

  • Interaction seems to be a difficult thing to pin down and characterize
  • User-centered versus system-centered characterizations
    • User intent: what a user wants to achieve through a specific interaction technique

Taxonomy of Interactions based on User Intent​

1. Select​

  • Mark items of interest
  • Often followed by further actions
  • Mouse Selection - Clocking on an item selects it and attributes of the data point are shown
  • Generalized Selection - Can select multiple items and filter

2. Explore - show me something different​

  • Enables users to examine a different subset of data
  • Overcome the limitation of display size
  • Panning in Google Earth

3. Reconfigure - show me a different arrangement​

  • Provide different perspectives by changing the spatial arrangement of representation
  • Sorting and rearranging columns in TableLens
  • Changing the attributes in a scatter plot
  • The baseline adjustment feature in Stacked Histogram

4. Encode - show me a different representation​

  • Change visual appearances (colour, shape, size etc)
  • May interactively change entire data representation

5.Abstract/Elaborate - show me more or less detail​

  • Adjust the level of abstraction
  • Details on demand
  • Unfolding, drill-down, zooming

6. Filter - show me something conditionally​

  • Change the set of data items being present based on some specific conditions
  • Change the data being present; focusing, narrowing/widening
  • Dynamic Query - Each filtering interaction essentially is an SQL query

7. Connect - show me related items​

  • Highlight associations and relationships
  • Show hidden data items that are relevant to a specified item

Brushing​

  • Very common technique in Info Visualisation
  • Applies when you have multiple views of the same data
  • Selecting or highlighting a case in one view generates highlighting the case in the other views