Christian Tominski

Tom Horak, Philip Berger, Heidrun Schumann et al.

Matrix visualizations are a useful tool to provide a general overview of a graph's structure. For multivariate graphs, a remaining challenge is to cope with the attributes that are associated with nodes and edges. Addressing this challenge, we propose responsive matrix cells as a focus+context approach for embedding additional interactive views into a matrix. Responsive matrix cells are local zoomable regions of interest that provide auxiliary data exploration and editing facilities for multivariate graphs. They behave responsively by adapting their visual contents to the cell location, the available display space, and the user task. Responsive matrix cells enable users to reveal details about the graph, compare node and edge attributes, and edit data values directly in a matrix without resorting to external views or tools. We report the general design considerations for responsive matrix cells covering the visual and interactive means necessary to support a seamless data exploration and editing. Responsive matrix cells have been implemented in a web-based prototype based on which we demonstrate the utility of our approach. We describe a walk-through for the use case of analyzing a graph of soccer players and report on insights from a preliminary user feedback session.

Christian Eichner, Heidrun Schumann, Christian Tominski

Modern display environments offer great potential for involving multiple users in presentations, discussions, and data analysis sessions. By showing multiple views on multiple displays, information exchange can be improved, several perspectives on the data can be combined, and different analysis strategies can be pursued. In this report, we describe concepts to support display composition, information distribution, and analysis coordination for visual data analysis in multi-display environments. In particular, a basic model for layout modeling is introduced, a graphical interface for interactive generation of the model is presented, and a layout mechanism is described that arranges multiple views on multiple displays automatically. Furthermore, approaches to meta-analysis will be discussed. The developed approaches are demonstrated in a use case that focuses on parameter space analysis for the segmentation of time series data.

Sven Kluge, Stefan Gladisch, Uwe Freiherr von Lukas et al.

Interactive lenses are useful tools for supporting the analysis of data in different ways. Most existing lenses are designed for 2D visualization and are operated using standard mouse and keyboard interaction. On the other hand, research on virtual lenses for novel 3D immersive visualization environments is scarce. Our work aims to narrow this gap in the literature. We focus particularly on the interaction with lenses. Inspired by natural interaction with magnifying glasses in the real world, our lenses are designed as graspable tools that can be created and removed as needed, manipulated and parameterized depending on the task, and even combined to flexibly create new views on the data. We implemented our ideas in a system for the visual analysis of 3D sonar data. Informal user feedback from more than a hundred people suggests that the designed lens interaction is easy to use for the task of finding a hidden wreck in sonar data.

Davide Ceneda, Theresia Gschwandtner, Thorsten May et al.

At VAST 2016, a characterization of guidance has been presented. It includes a definition of guidance and a model of guidance based on van Wijk's model of visualization. This note amends the original characterization of guidance in two aspects. First, we provide a clarification of what guidance actually is (and is not). Second, we insert into the model a conceptually relevant link that was missing in the original version.

Stefan Gladisch, Ulrike Kister, Christian Tominski et al.

Graph exploration and editing are still mostly considered independently and systems to work with are not designed for todays interactive surfaces like smartphones, tablets or tabletops. When developing a system for those modern devices that supports both graph exploration and graph editing, it is necessary to 1) identify what basic tasks need to be supported, 2) what interactions can be used, and 3) how to map these tasks and interactions. This technical report provides a list of basic interaction tasks for graph exploration and editing as a result of an extensive system review. Moreover, different interaction modalities of interactive surfaces are reviewed according to their interaction vocabulary and further degrees of freedom that can be used to make interactions distinguishable are discussed. Beyond the scope of graph exploration and editing, we provide an approach for finding and evaluating a mapping from tasks to interactions, that is generally applicable. Thus, this work acts as a guideline for developing a system for graph exploration and editing that is specifically designed for interactive surfaces.