Section: New Software and Platforms

Bertifier

Figure 3. Image of Bertifier, a web application for creating tabular visualizations from spreadsheets.

Functional Description

Bertifier is a web application for rapidly creating tabular visualizations from spreadsheets (see Figure 3 ). Bertifier draws from Jacques Bertin's matrix analysis method, whose goal was to “simplify without destroying” by encoding cell values visually and grouping similar rows and columns. Although there were several attempts to bring this method to computers, no implementation exists today that is both exhaustive and accessible to a large audience. Bertifier remains faithful to Bertin's method while leveraging the power of today's interactive computers. Tables are formatted and manipulated through crossets, a new interaction technique for rapidly applying operations on rows and columns. Bertifier also introduces visual reordering, a semi-interactive reordering approach that lets users apply and tune automatic reordering algorithms in a WYSIWYG manner. We showed in an evaluation that Bertifier has the potential to bring Bertin's method to a wider audience of both technical and non-technical users, and empower them with data analysis and communication tools that were so far only accessible to a handful of specialists.

• Participants: Jean-Daniel Fekete, Charles Perin and Pierre Dragicevic

• Partner: Université Paris-Sud

• Contact: Jean-Daniel Fekete

• URL: http://www.bertifier.com