Snap-together visualization coordinating multiple views to explore information.pdf

Snap-Together Visualization: Coordinating Multiple Views to Explore Information Chris North and Ben Shneiderman* Human-Computer Interaction Lab, Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, *Institute for Systems Research, Department of Computer Science University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 USA north@, ben@ /hcil ABSTRACT Information visualizations with multiple coordinated views enable users to rapidly explore complex data and discover relationships. However, it is usually difficult for users to find or create the coordinated visualizations they need. Snap-Together Visualization allows users to coordinate multiple views that are customized to their needs. Users query their relational database and load results into desired visualizations. Then they specify coordinations between visualizations for selecting, navigating, or re-querying. Developers can make independent visualization tools ‘snap- able’ by including a few hooks. KEYWORDS: User Interface, Coordination, Multiple Views, Tightly Coupled, Information Visualization. INTRODUCTION The multiple coordinated views approach is a powerful and increasingly-employed user-interface technique for exploring information. Each view is a visualization of some part of the information, and views are coordinated (a.k.a. “tightly coupled”, or “linked”) so that they operate together as a unified interface [NS97]. For example, Microsoft Word’s document-map feature displays the table of contents of the text in an adjacent frame. Selecting a heading in the map scrolls the document text directly to that section. Likewise, scrolling the document text highlights the current section in the map. A second example, Windows Explorer actually has 3 views: The left pane contains the directory hierarchy, the right pane shows the detailed contents of a selected directory, and (with “View as Web Page” on) also displays details of a selected file including a miniature quick-view. In a more advanced visualization, selecting a record in