As a subject in computer science, information visualization is the use of interactive, sensory representations, typically visual, of abstract data to reinforce cognition.

Information visualization is a complex research area. It builds on theory in information design, computer graphics, human-computer interaction and cognitive science.

Practical application of information visualization in computer programs involves selecting, transforming and representing abstract data in a form that facilitates human interaction for exploration and understanding.

Important aspects of information visualization are the interactivity and dynamics of the visual representation. Strong techniques enable the user to modify the visualization in real-time, thus affording unparalleled perception of patterns and structural relations in the abstract data in question.

Although much work in information visualization regards to visual forms, auditory and other sensory representations are also of concern.

Academic Journal

Information Visualization

Academic Conferences

One of the top academic conferences for new research in information visualization is the annually held IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (InfoVis).

InfoVis 2004

InfoVis 2005

Related research areas

• knowledge visualization
• data mining, also known as knowledge-discovery in databases (KDD)
• scientific visualization
• graph drawing

References

• Bederson, Benjamin B., Shneiderman, Ben. The Craft of Information Visualization: Readings and Refelections, Morgan Kaufmann, 2003, ISBN 1558609156.
• Card, Stuart K., Mackinlay, Jock D., Shneiderman, Ben. Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1999, ISBN 1-55860-533-9.
• William S. Cleveland (1993). Visualizing Data.
• William S. Cleveland (1994). The Elements of Graphing Data.
• Spence, Robert. Information Visualization, ACM Press, 2001, ISBN 0-201-59626-1.
• Edward R. Tufte (1992). The Visual Display of Quantitative Information
• Edward R. Tufte (1990). Envisioning Information.
• Edward R. Tufte (1997). Visual Explanations: Images and Quantities, Evidence and Narrative.
• Colin Ware (2000). Information Visualization: Perception for design.

External links

• http://dmoz.org/Reference/Knowledge_Management/Knowledge_Discovery/Information_Visualization/ - Open Directory, section on Information Visualization
• http://www.opendx.org/ - Open Data Explorer visualization software
• http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
• http://www.visualthesaurus.com - Visual Thesaurus
• http://prefuse.sourceforge.net - Java Toolkit for Interactive Information Visualization
• http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/piccolo - Toolkit for Zoomable User Interfaces
• http://www2.ilog.com/preview/Discovery - Interactive tool to browse through a large visualization design space.
• http://starlight.pnl.gov/ - Starlight Info Vis System, R&D100 winner
• http://in-spire.pnl.gov/ - IN-SPIRE™ Visual Document Analysis for Windows, R&D100 winner
• Finally, WikiPedia itself can be visualized by a technique, called history flow.