SellTrend: Inter-Attribute Visual Analysis of Temporal Transaction Data

We present a case study of our experience designing SellTrend, a visualization system for analyzing airline travel purchase requests. The relevant transaction data can be characterized as multi-variate temporal and categorical event sequences, and the chief problem addressed is how to help company analysts identify complex combinations of transaction attributes that contribute to failed purchase requests. SellTrend combines a diverse set of techniques ranging from time series visualization to faceted browsing and historical trend analysis in order to help analysts make sense of the data. We believe that the combination of views and interaction capabilities in SellTrend provides an innovative approach to this problem and to other similar types of multivariate, temporally driven transaction data analysis. Initial feedback from company analysts confirms the utility and benefits of the system.

[1]  Heidrun Schumann,et al.  Axes-based visualizations with radial layouts , 2004, SAC '04.

[2]  Thomas Berlage,et al.  FOCUS: the interactive table for product comparison and selection , 1996, UIST '96.

[3]  John T. Stasko,et al.  Jigsaw: Supporting Investigative Analysis through Interactive Visualization , 2007, 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology.

[4]  Michael Spenke,et al.  InfoZoom − Analysing Formula One racing results with an interactive data mining and visualisation tool , 2000 .

[5]  Anthony C. Robinson,et al.  Visual Exploration and Analysis of Historic Hotel Visits , 2007, Inf. Vis..

[6]  Alfred Inselberg,et al.  Multidimensional detective , 1997, Proceedings of VIZ '97: Visualization Conference, Information Visualization Symposium and Parallel Rendering Symposium.

[7]  Tom Lanning,et al.  Parallel bargrams for consumer-based information exploration and choice , 2001, UIST '01.

[8]  Cynthia A. Brewer,et al.  Color use guidelines for data representation , 1999 .

[9]  Alan J. Dix,et al.  Starting simple: adding value to static visualisation through simple interaction , 1998, AVI '98.

[10]  James D. Hollan,et al.  Direct Manipulation Interfaces , 1985, Hum. Comput. Interact..

[11]  Robert Spence,et al.  The Attribute Explorer: information synthesis via exploration , 1998, Interact. Comput..

[12]  John T. Stasko,et al.  Countering security information overload through alert and packet visualization , 2006, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[13]  Desney S. Tan,et al.  FacetMap: A Scalable Search and Browse Visualization , 2006, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[14]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Tree-maps: a space-filling approach to the visualization of hierarchical information structures , 1991, Proceeding Visualization '91.

[15]  Helwig Hauser,et al.  Parallel Sets: Visual Analysis of Categorical Data , 2005, INFOVIS.

[16]  Lucy T. Nowell,et al.  ThemeRiver: Visualizing Thematic Changes in Large Document Collections , 2002, IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph..

[17]  Kevin Li,et al.  Faceted metadata for image search and browsing , 2003, CHI '03.

[18]  Heidrun Schumann,et al.  Visual Methods for Analyzing Time-Oriented Data , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[19]  Daniel A. Keim,et al.  Pixel bar charts: a visualization technique for very large multi-attribute data sets? , 2002, Inf. Vis..

[20]  Raimund Dachselt,et al.  FacetZoom: a continuous multi-scale widget for navigating hierarchical metadata , 2008, CHI.

[21]  Jarke J. van Wijk,et al.  Squarified Treemaps , 2000, VisSym.

[22]  Desney S. Tan,et al.  FacetLens: exposing trends and relationships to support sensemaking within faceted datasets , 2009, CHI.

[23]  William Ribarsky,et al.  WireVis: Visualization of Categorical, Time-Varying Data From Financial Transactions , 2007, 2007 IEEE Symposium on Visual Analytics Science and Technology.

[24]  Tetsuji Takada,et al.  MieLog: A Highly Interactive Visual Log Browser Using Information Visualization and Statistical Analysis , 2002, LISA.

[25]  Martin Wattenberg,et al.  Visualizing the stock market , 1999, CHI Extended Abstracts.

[26]  John T. Stasko,et al.  Distributed Cognition as a Theoretical Framework for Information Visualization , 2008, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics.

[27]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  LifeLines: visualizing personal histories , 1996, CHI.

[28]  Ben Shneiderman,et al.  Ordered and quantum treemaps: Making effective use of 2D space to display hierarchies , 2002, TOGS.