Envisioning a Path to the Future

New SIGVIS Weblog - Send in Your Submissions

Welcome to our new SIGVIS Weblog.  Information Visualization is a rapidly emerging field at the nexus of a spectrum of academic disciplines - transdisciplinary and for the 21^st century. Historically, the area of research has been ahead of its time, synthetic, traversing and recombining innovation from traditionally compartmentalized academic disciplines. This weblog will focus on visionary possibilities and historical trajectories of information visualization. We encourage submissions that are transgressive, visually colorful and imaginative with an emphasis on the 'image', 'visualization' and 'sound' and with regards to 'information'.   

In one sense, Information Visualization combines mathematically oriented academic disciplines (computer science/information science) and 'outside of academe' areas, or right brain visual areas, to create new paradigms for 'visualizing information' for  purposes of pattern recognition, knowledge visualization and, ultimately, better information representation. Hopefully, this weblog will develop as a generative forum for discussions ranging from visualized large information systems (i.e. library catalogs), to image and moving image retrieval, to new models of organizing information visually (i.e. search engines) to new paradigm models (i.e. video games) of information applications. 

This weblog also encourages submission of entries regarding visionary possibilities of information visualization.  With the increasing power of computers and combining front end graphic possibilities with back-end databases, information visualization augments human intelligence with computer power and expands the capabilities for human knowledge creation. 

This weblog will explore better ways of seeing, envisioning information and providing visionary possibilities for new ways of working with 'information'.  Submissions are encouraged and should take a more thought-out but brief 4-9 paragraph format.  Topics regarding this area are open and can reflect upon where we have been, what we have learned or where we are going. 

Hopefully, this weblog will begin to historicize the field in a larger information science and technology context while providing specific examples to initiate dialogue, ongoing discussion and debate.  This weblog also invites ASIST SIGVIS members and nonmembers to brainstorm by opening larger visual trajectories and posing the needed challenges in envisioning the path to the future. 

Ray Uzwyshyn
Co-Chair and Website Coordinator, SIG VIS

Visualization Tools as Cognitive Artifacts - Donald Norman

The power of the unaided mind is highly overrated" and, one could argue, the goal of information visualization is to provide some of the necessary aid. I made that statement in my 1993 book "Things that make us smart," where I argued that "cognitive artifacts" have greatly enhanced our capabilities. The most important of these artifacts is that of representation, whether it be by the written word or notational systems (as for music, dance, mathematics, and engineering) or diagrams, graphs, and artistic renderings.

This special interest group on visualization is clearly an essential component of the development of ever-more powerful cognitive artifacts. Your job is to develop and apply the principles of information display in a form appropriate to the human sensory, perceptual, and cognitive systems. The term "visualization" should be generalized to include all perceptual systems, including auditory, spatio-temporal, and tactile senses, as well as motor output (and, of course, a person’s "output" is the computer system’s "input"). Our perceptual systems are tuned to help the body navigate through space, with a very tight coupling among the various senses as well as with the motor system, the musculature of the body that responds to and propels us through space.

   

To me, the most exciting new developments are those of total immersion, where the visual space extends around the body, where the acoustic milieu is powerful and informative, and where tactile input and body motion are all coupled together into a seamless experience. The potential for allowing true exploration of rich, complex data sets is exciting. Today, the exploration of complex data is more akin to batch processing than real-time interaction. One must select vantage points and dimensions of interest. Displays have to be manually changed. It doesn’t feel live, nor interactive, nor compelling: the act of specifying the display detracts from one’s focus and concentration upon the task.

This is one of the most exciting – and difficult of endeavors. It requires expertise in the topic domain, in computation, in the display of auditory, visual, and tactile information, and in the development of new input devices to sense the person’s actions and locations. It requires knowledge of human perceptual system and of technology. It’s a great, wonderful challenge where as much can be learned form artists as from science. Go for it!

   

Donald A. Norman, Palo Alto, CA
Nielsen Norman Group http://www.jnd.org
Prof. Computer Science, Cognitive Science & Psychology
Northwestern University, norman@northwestern.edu

Visualizing Microhistory - Eugene Garfield

There is a large literature on mapping and visualizing scholarly literature.  However, none of these methods have been used to create historical displays of works on a given subject. We have developed patented software called HistCite,TM which generates historiographs from bibliographic collections obtained from literature searches.

From a search of the ISI Web of Science or ISI Citation Indexes (SCI, SSCI, and/or A&HCI) on CD-ROM, an export file is created which contains the complete source document including all the cited references. These bibliographic collections are processed by the HistCite software in order to generate chronological and other ranked tables of source or cited authors, source or cited journals or words. In addition, historiographs are created at various thresholds of citation which highlight the most cited works, both inside and outside the collection.

 

HistCite also contains a module for detecting and editing errors or variations in cited references.

Ideally, the system will help the searcher quickly identify the most significant work on a topic and track its year-by-year historical development.

A wide range of collections have been processed. These can be found, together with a User Guide, at: http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/histcomp

ASIS&T members interested in evaluating the software can join a volunteer evaluator group. Please contact me for more information on this at garfield@codex.cis.upenn.edu .

Eugene Garfield, Chairman Emeritus ISI
www.eugenegarfield.org