Colloquia, Seminars and Conference News
Title : Using Information Visualization to Understand Data
Date : October 3, 2008. (11:00 am) Tea starts half an hour before each seminar
Location: ITEB 336
Speaker : Bongshin Lee
Abstract:
Information Visualization is the art and science of representing abstract information in a visual form that enables users to understand data through their perceptual and cognitive capabilities. It takes advantage of human pattern recognition, color and motion perception, spatial memory, and sensemaking skills. Information visualization also relies on interaction techniques that are properly tuned to human capabilities.
In this talk, I will show how visualization and interaction techniques can be used to help users understand data by presenting three information visualization systems; AdaptiveTree, CandidTree, and FacetLens. AdaptiviTree is a novel visualization that adaptively deforms the representation of the tree and uses its shape to convey semantic information in tournament-style brackets. CandidTree is an interactive visualization that helps users understand changes in hierarchies over time. It merges two trees into one and visualizes two types of structural changes – location and subtree structure change – on top of the merged tree. FacetLens is a visualization for interacting with large, metadata-rich databases by allowing users to easily assemble complex queries through iterative and direct interaction with the system. It uses a visual metaphor for both input (selection of metadata facets as filters) and output, and seamlessly integrates search and browse. I’ll conclude by describing ongoing challenges in evaluating the effectiveness of information visualization techniques.
Bio:Bongshin Lee is a researcher in the Visualization and Interaction Research (VIBE) group at Microsoft Research. Her main research interest is Human-Computer Interaction with a focus on information visualization and interaction techniques. Her PhD work was centered on investigating how people interact with graph visualization systems to understand the graph. She is currently focused on using information visualization to help machine learning researchers better explore the model space. She is also interested in developing user interfaces for mobile devices. Bongshin Lee received her Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea in 1998, and her Master of Science and Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Maryland at College Park in 2002 and 2006, respectively.
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