Reading Group – 1/31/2014 – 3-5

For VISTAS January reading group, we agreed at the developers meeting on Jan.22 to read things that would help prepare us for meeting with Margaret Burnett.  All of us will read:

Storytelling: The Next Step for Visualization, Robert Kosara , Tableau Software, Seattle, IEEE Computer, May 2013 (Vol. 46, No. 5) pp. 44-50 0018-9162/13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE.  See this site for an on-line version.  Fig1, Fig2, Fig3

We also agreed to each read an additional article on HCI or scientific visualization and to report on it at the session.  Possible readings mentioned:

  1. Review VisIT, and compare/contrast it to VISTAS.  from:  https://wci.llnl.gov/codes/visit/  Begun in 2000, VisIt was developed by the Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Simulation and Computing Initiative (ASCI) to visualize and analyze the results of terascale simulations; it is now maintained at Lawrence Livermore.  VisIt is a free interactive parallel visualization and graphical analysis tool for viewing scientific data on Unix and PC platforms. Users can quickly generate visualizations from their data, animate them through time, manipulate them, and save the resulting images for presentations. VisIt contains a rich set of visualization features so that you can view your data in a variety of ways. It can be used to visualize scalar and vector fields defined on two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) structured and unstructured meshes. VisIt was designed to handle very large data set sizes in the terascale range and yet can also handle small data sets in the kilobyte range.
  2. An article referenced by Kosara looks interesting:  K.-L. Ma et al., “Scientific Storytelling Using Visualization,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 32, no. 1, 2012, pp. 12-19.
  3. One of the 4 articles (other than Kosara’s) mentioned in Rhyne’s Computing Today’s “A Snapshot of Current Trends in Visualization”. 
    1. “Feature Tracking and Visualization of the Madden-Julian Oscillation in Climate Simulated,” Teng-Yok Lee et al  IEEE Graphics July/August 2013 (Vol. 33, No. 4) pp. 29-37 , 0272-1716/13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
    2. “LineUp: Visual Analysis of Multi-Attribute Rankings”, Samuel Gratzl et al.  IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, DECEMBER 2013 (, ) pp. 2277-2286  /13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
    3. TVCG article “D3 Data-Driven Documents,” by Michael Bostock, Vadim Ogievetsky, and Jeffrey Heer, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, December 2011 (Vol. 17, No. 12) pp. 2301-2309, 1077-2626/11/$31.00 © 2011 IEEE
    4. “Visual Analytics Infrastructure: From Data Management to Exploration,” Jean-Daniel Fekete, IEEE Computer, July 2013 (Vol. 46, No. 7) pp. 22-29  0018-9162/13/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE
  4. Justin recommends (and Hornbaek looks like the best option to me):
    1. Current practice in measuring usability: Challenges to usability studies and research, Kasper Hornbaek, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Int. J. Human-Computer Studies 64 (2006) 79–102. http://www.cse.chalmers.se/research/group/idc/ituniv/courses/11/hcd/literatures/Hornbaek%202006%20usability%20measurement%20methods.pdf
    2. http://www.academia.edu/5234775/USER_INTERFACE_DESIGN_WITH_VISUALIZATION_TECHNIQUES – This is a pretty basic paper on user interface aesthetics. Very introductory but risks being a bit too basic for our group.
    3. it might be interesting to read one of Margaret Burnett’s papers. I looked over her publication history and most seem to be related to visual programming & machine learning/AI topics. Her catalog is available at http://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~burnett/reprints.html
    4. Justin said he would check out publications from VisWeek, BELIV 2012 which had several white papers on science visualization evaluation, including our own VISTAS paper.