Chapter 2 – Information Visualization

Publisher Summary Computation provides the most plastic representational medium and for that it can be employed to mimic successful mechanisms of earlier media and also enables novel techniques that were not previously possible. Computation-based information presentations promise to dramatically enrich the understandings as well as assist in navigating and effectively exploiting rapidly growing and increasingly complex information collections. This chapter surveys a sample of recent information visualization research. Information visualization has a long history, dating to the earliest forms of symbolic representation, and can be approached from multiple perspectives, ranging across psychology, epistemology, graphic design, linguistics, and semiology to newer perspectives emerging from cognitive science. The goal of this chapter is to provide a glimpse of current research as it attempts to communicate the exciting potential of new dynamic representations. To accomplish this, profiling is done for selected recent work from the research group. This chapter further discusses the beginnings of a paradigm shift for thinking about information, one that starts viewing information as being much more dynamic and reactive to the nature of people's tasks, activities, and even relationships with others.