Initial Posting Due: Tue, Nov 07 at (Canvas Link)
Readings
Note: Since Design Challenge 2 is in high gear, the reading for this week is intentionally a little bit lighter.
The first reading is a survey paper that provides a good way to organize many of the interactions we see in visualization, and provides lots of good examples.
- Heer, J., & Shneiderman, B. (2012). Interactive dynamics for visual analysis. Communications of the ACM, 55(4), 45. (pdf) (doi)
- Maniplate View (Chapter 11 from Munzner’s Visualization Analysis & Design) (Munzner-11-ManipulateView.pdf 545 kb)
- Facet into Multiple Views (Chapter 12 from Munzner’s Visualization Analysis & Design) (Munzner-12-FacetMultipleViews.pdf 1.0 mb)
This isn’t specific to interaction, but it fits better here than anywhere else.
Optional
I’ll use this paper to frame the discussion in class. It provides a good “why not add interaction” point of view.
- Lam, H. (2008). A Framework of Interaction Costs in Information Visualization. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 14(6), 1149–1156. (doi). (pdf link to Heidi’s page)
Online Discussion
Initial Posting Due: Tue, Nov 07 at (Canvas Link)
Interaction is a great tool for addressing visualization challenges. When there’s something hard, add some interaction to let the user solve the problem.
For this week’s discussion, I want you to consider some of the interactions you see in visualizations and consider why they are necessary.
- Pick an example (or two) of a a visualization that uses interaction effectively. Describe what the interaction is, and why it’s so important. Describe an alternative design that achieves the same effect without interaction (or why you think it wouldn’t be possible to do without interaction).
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Pick an example (or make one up) of a visualization that uses interaction where it would be possible to achieve similar effects using a static (non-interactive) visualization. What are the pros and cons of the two different (interaction / non-interaction) approaches.
Hopefully, these examples will give groups a chance to have some discussion about the pros and cons of interaction and the alternatives. You might also discuss how different interactions might have been chosen.
