Task-Specific Visualization Design

This case study in operational weather forecasting demonstrates the principles of task-specific visualization design: defining user needs, implementing that definition, and establishing techniques for different user goals. The current applications can generate visualizations for the Web after an intermediate step of migrating the products to a Web server. This proves advantageous in an operational environment because the forecaster has content control. However, direct generation within a Web browser, which requires a simplified user interface and content, will require further refinement of the task decomposition. The notion of task-driven customization of content and interface has succeeded in weather forecasting, but the idea also applies to other domains. The potential benefits should encourage visualization designers to adopt these principles in their application development.