AmazonViz: visualizing Amazon.com purchase orders

This article describes a technique to visualize query results, representing purchase orders placed on Amazon.com, along a traditional 2-D scatter plot and a space-filling spiral. We integrate 3-D objects that vary their spatial placement, color, and texture properties into a visualization algorithm. This algorithm represents important aspects of a purchase order based on experimental results from human vision, computer graphics, and psychology. The resulting visual abstractions are used by viewers to rapidly and effectively explore and analyze the underlying purchase orders data.