Information Visualization

Motivation

Information Visualization (InfoVis) is a research area that focuses on the use of visualization techniques to help people understand and analyze data. While related fields such as Scientific Visualization involve the presentation of data that has some physical or geometric correspondence, Information Visualization centers on abstract information without such correspondences, i.e., there is no possibility to map this information into the physical world in most cases. Examples of such abstract data are symbolic, tabular, networked, hierarchical, or textual information sources. The ever increasing amount of data generated or made available every day confirms the urgent need of suitable InfoVis tools. As prerequisite for building a successful visualization, InfoVis combines several aspects of different research areas, such as Scientific Visualization, Computer Graphics, Graph Drawing, Data Mining, Information Design, Cognitive Psychology, or Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

One main goal of this second Dagstuhl Seminar on Information Visualization is to bring together theoreticians and practitioners from the addressed research areas with a special focus on the intersection of InfoVis and Human-Computer Interaction. Many researchers are active in both of these fields, thus the seminar will be especially attractive to those people, but also for researchers who work in one field alone or in related areas respectively. To support discussions that are related to the visualization of real world data, we will also invite researchers from selected application areas, such as Bioinformatics or GeoSciences. The following themes will be discussed during the seminar:

• Collaboration within Information Visualization: Collaboration is becoming more and more important in InfoVis and it can occur in collocated or distributed locations and be synchronous or asynchronous. The development of novel interaction techniques, suitable visual representations, social components, or special display technologies is only a sample of important questions that should be discussed.
• The Importance of Interaction: The representational aspects of information visualization often receive the most focus, but the interactive capabilities of an InfoVis system are just as important. What makes for an effective, interactive system? What does powerful interaction capability add to a specific visualization?
• The Influence of Display Technologies on InfoVis: Large displays with high-resolution are one possibility to address the well-known scalability problem. On the other hand, small-scale displays, especially in context of mobile phones or PDAs, also come to the fore. The size and the type of a display have a large influence to the user interaction and visual representation.
• InfoVis for the Masses: In addition to the typical single-analyst, deep-dive analytical component of InfoVis, a growing focus of research is examining how to allow large numbers of people to produce, view, and discuss information visualizations as well. The topic came up during the first Dagstuhl Seminar on InfoVis and could not be comprehensively discussed.
• Multimodal User Interaction: Multimodality is referred to as being the combination of several modalities, such as the visual, sensory, or auditory modality. The extension of InfoVis with other modalities is not very well explored, and many open questions exist. For example: when we should use several modalities and which ones? Or, how should they be combined?
• Prior Knowledge of Users: Visualization tools should be sensitive to the prior knowledge of their users regarding application-specific knowledge and visualization knowledge. Choosing optimal levels of visual abstraction and finding effective visual metaphors are two challenges in this area, in which the term "optimal" depends on the user. A visualization system should adjust to the user's needs.
• InfoVis Aesthetics: Often, a visually appealing visualization is more successful than a more efficient but unappealing visualization that presents the same data. A closer look into such phenomena could improve our only vague understanding of this intersection of InfoVis and Visualization Arts, and thus, it could improve the success of information visualization techniques in practice.

The organizers are confident that the in-depth discussions and the presented research will provide a better understanding of the interrelationships between InfoVis and HCI.