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| Author(s): |
José Fernando Rodrigues Junior
Total Authors: 1
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| Document type: | Doctoral Thesis |
| Press: | São Carlos. |
| Institution: | Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Instituto de Ciências Matemáticas e de Computação (ICMC/SB) |
| Defense date: | 2007-07-17 |
| Examining board members: |
Agma Juci Machado Traina;
Maria Cecilia Calani Baranauskas;
Claudio Kirner;
Luciana Porcher Nedel;
Maria Cristina Ferreira de Oliveira
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| Advisor: | Agma Juci Machado Traina |
| Abstract | |
This thesis presents a theoretical framework to assist the study and the design of interactive data visualization techniques. Traditionally, visualization techniques have been designed based on analysts? experience. Many works, though, have sought to develop a coherent comprehension space to explain how visualizations are composed and to allow the prediction of new approaches for visualization techniques. However, precursor proposals present inadequacies and have not been able neither to furnish new systematizations nor to explain late techniques found in literature. In an initial step, this thesis reviews concepts on visualization, perception and cognition aiming at explaining how visual data analyses work. The revision of these works is synthesized in a process of visual expressivity that interrelates pre-attentive stimuli, analytical visual perception and cognitive interpretation. Then, after an extensive revision of related works, the discussion proceeds by structuring a plan for theorizing the constitution of methods for data visual representation. This plan furnishes the development of an initial systematization in the form of a taxonomy that characterizes the pre-attentive constituents of visualizations. This characterization considers visual analytical perceptions, which are part of the processes of visual expressivity. Like so, in a perceptions oriented approach, visualization techniques are classified according to a limited set of common characteristics and to data spatialization processes. The next step in the discussion proceeds to the construction of a space with dimensions position, shape and color. The proposed space is named Spatial/Perceptual Design Space, it considers the possibility of multiple cycles of data spatialization and also interaction techniques. Based on the design space just introduced, this thesis presents a model for the definition of parameters for visualization design. This model, which is a first result of the application of the presented concepts, foresees a tool for the definition, automatic presentation and empirical evaluation of visual data representations. The work is finished with the description of two complete systems for the visualization of graphs and multivariate data. Hence, in the last part of the text, systems GMine and VisTree are formally presented and analyzed as study cases under the light of the theory introduced in the thesis (AU) | |