Section: New Results

Pondering the Concept of Abstraction in (Illustrative) Visualization

Participants : Ivan Viola [TU Wien, Austria and KAUST, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] , Tobias Isenberg [correspondant] .

Figure 10. Illustration of the abstraction concept.

We discussed the concept of directness in the context of spatial interaction with visualization (Figure 10). In particular, we proposed a model (autoreffig:directness) that allows practitioners to analyze and describe the spatial directness of interaction techniques, ultimately to be able to better understand interaction issues that may affect usability. To reach these goals, we distinguished between different types of directness. Each type of directness depends on a particular mapping between different spaces, for which we consider the data space, the visualization space, the output space, the user space, the manipulation space, and the interaction space. In addition to the introduction of the model itself, we also showed how to apply it to several real-world interaction scenarios in visualization, and thus discussed the resulting types of spatial directness, without recommending either more direct or more indirect interaction techniques. In particular, we demonstrated descriptive and evaluative usage of the proposed model, and also briefly discussed its generative usage.

More on the project Web page: https://tobias.isenberg.cc/VideosAndDemos/Bruckner2018MSD.