Information Visualization
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SECOND EDITION INFORMATION VISUALIZATION PERCEPTION FOR DESIGN Egocentric object and COLIN WARE Pattern map The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies Series Editors: Stuart Card, PARC; Jonathan Grudin, Microsoft; Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group Information Visualization: Your Wish is My Command: Perception for Design, 2"d Edition Programming by Example Colin Ware Edited by Henry Lieberman Interaction Design for Complex Problem Solving: GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Dos for Softzuare Developing Useful and Usable Software Developers and Web Designers Barbara Mire1 JeffJohnson The Craft of Information Visualization: Information Visualization: Perception for Design Readings and Reflections Colin Ware Written and edited by Ben Bederson and Ben Shneiderman Robots for Kids: Exploring New Technologies for Learning HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Edited by Allison Druin and James Hendler Towards a Multidisciplinary Science Edited by John M. Carroll Information Appliances and Beyond: Interaction Design for Consumer Products Web Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes, Edited by Eric Bergman and How to Avoid Them JeffJohnson Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think Observing the User Experience: Written and edited by Stuart K. Card, Jock D. A Practitioner's Guide to User Research Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman Mike Kuniavsky The Design of Children's Technology Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Edited by Allison Druin Design and Refine User Interfaces Carolyn Snyder Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide Jared M. Spool, Tara Scanlon, Will Schroeder, Persuastue Technology: Uszng Computers to Carolyn Snyder, and Terri DeAngelo , _ Cbange -t 3Vs 'Thtek and Do B: j? Fogg The Usability Engineering Lifecycle: A Practitioner's Handbook for User Interface Design Coordznatzng User-Interfaces for Conszstency Deborah J. Mayhew Edaed hy Jaltob Nielsen Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Usabzlzty for the'Web: Systems Deszgnlng Web Sztes that Work Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt Tom Brinck, Darren Gergle, and Scott D. Wood Human-Computer Interface Design: Success Stories, Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Emerging Methods, and Real World Context Development of human-Computer Interaction Edited by Marianne Rudisill, Clayton Lewis, Peter Mary Beth Rosson and John M. Carroll P. Polson, and Timothy D. McKay Second Edition INFORMATION Perception for Design Colin Ware AMSTERDAM BOSTON HEIDELBERG LONDON NEW YORK . OXFORD PARIS SAN DIEGO SAN FRANCISCO SINGAPORE SYDNEY TOKYO M :( Morgan Kaufmann is an imprint of Elsevier MORGAN KAUFMANN PUBLISHERS Publishing Director Diane Cerra Publishing Services Manager Simon Crump Project Manager Justin Palmeiro Editorial Coordinator Mona Buehler Marketing Manager Brian Grimm Production Coordinator Graphic World Publishing Services Cover Design Ross Carron Design Text Design Frances Baca, Frances Baca Design Composition SNP Best-set Typesetter, Ltd., Hong ICong Technical Illustration SNP Best-set Typesetter, Ltd., Hong Kong Copyeditor Graphic World Publishing Services Proofreader Graphic World Publishing Services Indexer Ty Koontz Morgan Kaufmann Publishers is an imprint of Elsevier. 500 Sansome Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94111 This book is printed on acid-free paper. O 2004 by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. @ Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks or registered trademarks. 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Printed in China 09 08 07 06 05 5432 CONTENTS Figure Credits xv Foreword xvii Preface xix Preface to the first Edition xxi CHAPTER 1 Foundation for a Science of Data Visualization 1 Visualization Stages 4 Experimental Semiotics Based on Perception 5 Semiotics of Graphics 6 Pictures as Sensory Languages 8 Sensory versus Arbitrary Symbols 10 Properties of Sensory and Arbitrary Representation 13 Testing Claims about Sensory Representations 15 Arbitrary Conventional Representations 15 The Study of Arbitrary Conventional Symbols 17 A Model of Perceptual Processing 20 Stage 1: Parallel Processing to Extract Low-Level Properties of the Visual Scene 20 Stage 2: Pattern Perception 21 Stage 3: Sequential Goal-Directed Processing 22 Types of Data 23 Entities 23 Relationships 23 Attributes of Entities or Relationships 24 Operations Considered as Data 25 Metadata 26 Conclusion 27 xxvi INFORMATION VISUALIZATION: PERCEPTION FOR DESIGN ate students and research assistants on visualization-related projects: Daniel Jessome, Richard Guitard, Timothy Lethbridge, Siew Hong Yang, Sean Riley, Serge Limoges, David Fowler, Stephen Osborne, I<. Wing Wong, Dale Chapman, Pat Cavanaugh, Raviil Balakrishnan, Mark Paton, Monica Sardesai, Cyril Gobrecht, Suryan Stalin, Justine Hickey, Yanchao Li, Rohan Parkhi, Kathy Lowther, Li Wang, Greg Parker, Daniel Fleet, Jun Yang, Graham Sweet, Roland Arsenault, Natalie Webber, Poorang Irani, Jordan Lutes, Nhu Le, Irina Padioukova, Glenn Franck, Lyn Bartram, and Matthew Plumlee. Many of the ideas presented here have been refined through their efforts. Peter Pirolli, Doug Gillan, and Nahum Gershon made numerous suggestions that helped me improve the manuscript. As a result, the last two chapters, especially, underwent radical revision. I also wish to thank the editorial staff at Morgan Kaufmann: Diane Cerra, Belinda Breyer, and Heather Collins. Finally, my wife, Dianne Ramey, read every word, made it readable, and kept me going. CHAPTER 1 Foundation for a Science of Data Visualization In his book The End of Science, science writer John Horgan (1997) argues that science is finished except for the mopping up of details. He makes a good case where physics is con- cerned. In that discipline, the remaining deep problems may involve generating so much energy as to require the harnessing of entire stars. Similarly, biology has its foundations in DNA and genetics and is now faced with the infinite but often tedious complexity of mapping genes into proteins through intricate pathways. What Horgan fails to recognize is that cognitive science has fundamental problems that are still to be solved. In particular, the mechanisms of the construction and storage of knowledge remain open questions. He implicitly adopts the physics-centric view of science, which holds that physics is the queen of sciences, and in descending order come chemistry, then biology, with psychology barely acknowledged as a science at all. In this pantheon, sociology is regarded as somewhere on a par with astrology. This attitude is short-sighted. Chemistry builds on physics, enabling our understanding of materials; biology builds on chemistry, enabling us to understand the much greater complexity of living organisms; and psychology builds on neurophysiology, enabling us to understand the processes of cognition. At each level is a separate discipline greater in complexity and level of difficulty than those beneath. It is difficult to conceive of a value scale for which the mechanisms of thought are not of fundamentally greater interest and importance than the interaction of subatomic particles. Those who dismiss psychology as a pseudo-science have not being paying attention. Over the past few decades, enormous strides have been made in identifying the brain structures and cognitive mechanisms that have enabled humans to create the huge body of knowledge that now exists. But we need to go one step further and recognize that people with machines, and in groups, are much more cognitively powerful than a single person alone with his or her thoughts. This has been true for a long time. Artifacts such as paper, writing, and geometry instruments have been cognitive tools for centuries. It is not necessary to take the cultural relativists' view to see that sciences are built using socially constructed symbol systems. The review process employed 2 INFORMATION VISUALIZATION: PERCEPTION FOR DESIGN by scientific journals is an obvious example of a social process critical to the construction of knowledge. As Hutchins (1995)so effectively pointed out, thinking is not something that goes on entirely, or even mostly, inside people's heads. Little intellectual work is accomplished with our eyes and ears closed. Most cognition is done as a kind of interaction with cognitive tools, pencils and paper, calculators, and increasingly, computer-based intellectual supports and information systems. Neither is cognition mostly accomplished alone with a computer. It occurs as a process in systems containing many people and many cognitive tools. Since the beginning of science,