1791223
A two-stage framework for designing visual analytics system in organizational environments
A perennially interesting research topic in the field of visual analytics is how to effectively develop systems that support organizational users' decision-making and reasoning processes. The problem is, however, most domain analytical practices generally vary from organization to organization. This leads to diverse designs of visual analytics systems in incorporating domain analytical processes, making it difficult to generalize the success from one domain to another. Exacerbating this problem is the dearth of general models of analytical workflows available to enable such timely and effective designs. To alleviate these problems, we present a two-stage framework for informing the design of a visual analytics system. This design framework builds upon and extends current practices pertaining to analytical workflow and focuses, in particular, on incorporating both general domain analysis processes as well as individual's analytical activities. We illustrate both stages and their design components through examples, and hope this framework will be useful for designing future visual analytics systems. We validate the soundness of our framework with two visual analytics systems, namely Entity Workspace [8] and PatViz [37].
14825532
An Interactive Visual Analytics System for Bridge Management
Bridges deteriorate over their life cycles and require continuous maintenance to ensure their structural integrity, and in turn, the safety of the public. Maintaining bridges is a multi‐faceted operation that requires both domain knowledge and analytics techniques over large data sources. Although most existing bridge management systems (BMS) are very efficient at data storage, they are not as effective at providing analytical capabilities or as flexible at supporting different inspection technologies. In this paper, we present a visual analytics system that extends the capability of current BMSs. Based on a nation‐wide survey and our interviews with bridge managers, we designed our system to be customizable so that it can provide interactive exploration, information correlation, and domain‐oriented data analysis. When tested by bridge managers of the U.S. Department of Transportation, we validated that our system provides bridge managers with the necessary features for performing in‐depth analysis of bridges from a variety of perspectives that are in accordance to their typical workflow.
9404043
Visual analytics: how much visualization and how much analytics?
The term Visual Analytics has been around for almost five years by now, but still there are on-going discussions about what it actually is and in particular what is new about it. The core of our view on Visual Analytics is the new enabling and accessible analytic reasoning interactions supported by the combination of automated and visual analysis. In this paper, we outline the scope of Visual Analytics using two problem and three methodological classes in order to workout the need for and purpose of Visual Analytics. By examples of analytic reasoning interaction, the respective advan- tages and disadvantages of automated and visual analysis methods are explained leading to a glimpse into the future of how Visual Analytics methods will enable us to go beyond what is possible when separately using the two methods.
11517096
Data, Information, and Knowledge in Visualization
In visualization, we use the terms data, information and knowledge extensively, often in an interrelated context. In many cases, they indicate different levels of abstraction, understanding, or truthfulness. For example, "visualization is concerned with exploring data and information," "the primary objective in data visualization is to gain insight into an information space," and "information visualization" is for "data mining and knowledge discovery." In other cases, these three terms indicate data types, for instance, as adjectives in noun phrases, such as data visualization, information visualization, and knowledge visualization. These examples suggest that data, information, and knowledge could serve as both the input and output of a visualization process, raising questions about their exact role in visualization.
206804420
A Nested Model for Visualization Design and Validation
We present a nested model for the visualization design and validation with four layers: characterize the task and data in the vocabulary of the problem domain, abstract into operations and data types, design visual encoding and interaction techniques, and create algorithms to execute techniques efficiently. The output from a level above is input to the level below, bringing attention to the design challenge that an upstream error inevitably cascades to all downstream levels. This model provides prescriptive guidance for determining appropriate evaluation approaches by identifying threats to validity unique to each level. We also provide three recommendations motivated by this model: authors should distinguish between these levels when claiming contributions at more than one of them, authors should explicitly state upstream assumptions at levels above the focus of a paper, and visualization venues should accept more papers on domain characterization.
9593498
Science of Analytical Reasoning
There has been progress in the science of analytical reasoning and in meeting the recommendations for future research that were laid out when the field of visual analytics was established. Researchers have also developed a group of visual analytics tools and methods that embody visual analytics principles and attack important and challenging real-world problems. However, these efforts are only the beginning and much study remains to be done. This article examines the state of the art in visual analytics methods and reasoning and gives examples of current tools and capabilities. It shows that the science of visual analytics needs interdisciplinary efforts, indicates some of the disciplines that should be involved and presents an approach to how they might work together. Finally, the article describes some gaps, opportunities and future directions in developing new theories and models that can be enacted in methods and design principles and applied to significant and complex practical problems and data.
2689153
Visual Analytics Technology Transition Progress
The authors provide a description of the transition process for visual analytic tools and contrast this with the transition process for more traditional software tools. This paper takes this difference into account and describes a user-oriented approach to technology transition including a discussion of key factors that should be considered and adapted to each situation. The progress made in transitioning visual analytic tools in the past 5 years is described and challenges that remain are enumerated.
501472
The Science of Interaction
There is a growing recognition within the visual analytics community that interaction and inquiry are inextricable. It is through the interactive manipulation of a visual interface–the analytic discourse–that knowledge is constructed, tested, refined and shared. This article reflects on the interaction challenges raised in the visual analytics research and development agenda and further explores the relationship between interaction and cognition. It identifies recent exemplars of visual analytics research that have made substantive progress toward the goals of a true science of interaction, which must include theories and testable premises about the most appropriate mechanisms for human–information interaction. Seven areas for further work are highlighted as those among the highest priorities for the next 5 years of visual analytics research: ubiquitous, embodied interaction; capturing user intentionality; knowledge-based interfaces; collaboration; principles of design and perception; interoperability; and interaction evaluation. Ultimately, the goal of a science of interaction is to support the visual analytics and human–computer interaction communities through the recognition and implementation of best practices in the representation and manipulation of visual displays.
7039904
The value of visualization
The field of visualization is getting mature. Many problems have been solved, and new directions are sought for. In order to make good choices, an understanding of the purpose and meaning of visualization is needed. Especially, it would be nice if we could assess what a good visualization is. In this paper an attempt is made to determine the value of visualization. A technological viewpoint is adopted, where the value of visualization is measured based on effectiveness and efficiency. An economic model of visualization is presented, and benefits and costs are established. Next, consequences (brand limitations of visualization are discussed (including the use of alternative methods, high initial costs, subjective/less, and the role of interaction), as well as examples of the use of the model for the judgement of existing classes of methods and understanding why they are or are not used in practice. Furthermore, two alternative views on visualization are presented and discussed: viewing visualization as an art or as a scientific discipline. Implications and future directions are identified.
8489976
Finding business information by visualizing enterprise document activity
In an enterprise environment, business information, such as project proposals and product discussions, is dynamic and often embedded in documents and document activities (e.g, emails, Web pages and office documents). Because this information is essential to business processes, corporate employees need an effective means to retrieve it. Some commercial products, including Google Desktop, provide keyword searches for finding some of this information. However, this approach is not always effective as successful keyword searches can be difficult to construct, and even the best queries may fail to find some important materials. In this paper, we present Taste (Temporal Activities and Story TElling), an interactive visual analytics system that enhances the enterprise employee's capabilities in searching and sharing diverse and dynamic business information. Taste was designed, after interviews with corporate employees, to follow their information retrieval cues and help them manage, review and share the business information embedded in their document activities. Results of our lab and field studies validate that Taste provides employees the confidence and necessary features to more efficiently and effectively retrieve business information from their documents and activities.
1304232
Using visualization to support network and application management in a data center
We argue that there is a continuum between completely manual and completely automated management of networks and distributed applications. The ability to visualize the status of the network and applications inside a data center allows human users to rapidly asses the health of the system - quickly identifying problems that span across components and solving problems that challenge fully autonomic and machine-learning based management systems. We present a case study that highlights the requirements on visualization systems designed for the management of networks and applications inside large data centers. We explain the design of the Visual-I system that meets these requirements and the experience of an operations team using Visual-I.
67757411
Integrating Human-Computer Interaction Development into the Systems Development Life Cycle: A Methodology
Incorporating a human computer interaction (HCI) perspective into the systems development life cycle (SDLC) is necessary to information systems (IS) success and, in turn, to the success of businesses. However, modern SDLC models are based more on organizational needs than human needs. The human interaction aspect of an information system is usually considered far too little (only the screen interface) and far too late in the IS development process (only at the design stage). Thus, often a gap exists between satisfying organizational needs and supporting and enriching human users. This problem can be addressed by carefully integrating HCI development into the SDLC process to achieve a truly human-centered IS development approach. This paper examines the roles of HCI in systems development, justifies the importance of considering HCI through out the entire systems development life cycle, presents a methodology for human-centered IS development, and demonstrates how to apply this methodology to develop human-centered information systems.
60837336
Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics
This is the book form of the Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics to be published by IEEE in 2005.
11258003
Visual analytics for complex concepts using a human cognition model
As the information being visualized and the process of understanding that information both become increasingly complex, it is necessary to develop new visualization approaches that facilitate the flow of human reasoning. In this paper, we endeavor to push visualization design a step beyond current user models by discussing a modeling framework of human ldquohigher cognition.rdquo Based on this cognition model, we present design guidelines for the development of visual interfaces designed to maximize the complementary cognitive strengths of both human and computer. Some of these principles are already being reflected in the better visual analytics designs, while others have not yet been applied or fully applied. But none of the guidelines have explained the deeper rationale that the model provides. Lastly, we discuss and assess these visual analytics guidelines through the evaluation of several visualization examples.
5871177
Time Flies When You're Having Fun: Cognitive Absorption and Beliefs About Information Technology Usage
Extant explanations of why users behave in particular ways toward information technologies have tended to focus predominantly on instrumental beliefs as drivers of individual usage intentions. Prior work in individual psychology, however, suggests that holistic experiences with technology as captured in constructs such as enjoyment and flow are potentially important explanatory variables in technology acceptance theories. In this paper, we describe a multi-dimensional construct labeled cognitive absorption and defined as a state of deep involvement with software. Cognitive absorption, theorized as being exhibited through the five dimensions of 
 
temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, and curiosity, is posited to be a proximal antecedent of two important beliefs about technology use: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. In addition, we propose that the individual traits of playfulness and personal innovativeness are important determinants of cognitive absorption. Based on the conceptual definition of this construct, operational measures for each dimension are developed. Using the World Wide Web as the target technology, scale validation indicates that the operational measures have acceptable psychometric properties and confirmatory factor analysis supports the proposed multi-dimensional structure. Structural equation analysis provides evidence for the theorized nomological net of cognitive absorption. Theoretical and practical implications are offered
1460115
Visualizing the evolution of Web ecologies
Several visualizations have emerged which attempt to visualize all or part of the World Wide Web. Those visualizations, however, fail to present the dynamically changing ecology of users and documents on the Web. We present new techniques for Web Ecology and Evolution Visualization (WEEV). Disk Trees represent a discrete time slice of the Web ecology. A collection of Disk Trees forms a Time Tube, representing the evolution of the Web over longer periods of time. These visualizations are intended to aid authors and webmasters with the production and organization of content, assist Web surfers making sense of information, and help researchers understand the Web.
4311525
Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI
For years the HCI community has struggled to integrate design in research and practice. While design has gained a strong foothold in practice, it has had much less impact on the HCI research community. In this paper we propose a new model for interaction design research within HCI. Following a research through design approach, designers produce novel integrations of HCI research in an attempt to make the right thing: a product that transforms the world from its current state to a preferred state. This model allows interaction designers to make research contributions based on their strength in addressing under-constrained problems. To formalize this model, we provide a set of four lenses for evaluating the research contribution and a set of three examples to illustrate the benefits of this type of research.
7302222
Four paradigms of information systems development
Developing computer-based information systems necessarily involves making a number of implicit and explicit assumptions. The authors examine four different approaches to information systems development.
18650062
Designing Knowledge-Assisted Visual Analytics Systems for Organizational Environments
We present research focused on designing knowledge-assisted visual analytics systems for workers in organizational environments. We focus on business analysts and asset managers, who work collaboratively to analyze information and make decisions. Through extensive investigations in two organizational environments, we found that these knowledge workers struggle with managing and analyzing information from multiple perspectives. Their current tools lack support for aggregating, organizing, and sharing such information. To address their needs, we characterized their analytic workflows, extracted specific key knowledge actions for each task commonly found in these workflows, and designed and evaluated two visual analytics systems that support and encapsulate these knowledge actions. We provide design guidelines that should be used when designing knowledge-assisted visual analytics systems, and illustrate their effectiveness with two systems built by following them.
34441790
Contextual design - defining customer-centered systems
This book introduces a customer-centered approach to business by showing how data gathered from people while they work can drive the definition of a product or process while supporting the needs of teams and their organizations. This is a practical, hands-on guide for anyone trying to design systems that reflect the way customers want to do their work. The authors developed Contextual Design, the method discussed here, through their work with teams struggling to design products and internal systems. In this book, you'll find the underlying principles of the method and how to apply them to different problems, constraints, and organizational situations. 
 
Contextual Design enables you to 
+ gather detailed data about how people work and use systems 
+ develop a coherent picture of a whole customer population 
+ generate systems designs from a knowledge of customer work 
+ diagram a set of existing systems, showing their relationships, inconsistencies, redundancies, and omissions 
 
Table of Contents 
 
Chapter 1 Introduction 
Chapter 2 Gathering Customer Data 
Chapter 3 Principles of Contextual Inquiry 
Chapter 4 Contextual Inquiry in Practice 
Chapter 5 A Language of Work 
Chapter 6 Work Models 
Chapter 7 The Interpretation Session 
Chapter 8 Consolidation 
Chapter 9 Creating One View of the Customer 
Chapter 10 Communicating to the Organization 
Chapter 11 Work Redesign 
Chapter 12 Using Data to Drive Design 
Chapter 13 Design from Data 
Chapter 14 System Design 
Chapter 15 The User Environment Design 
Chapter 16 Project Planning and Strategy 
Chapter 17 Prototyping as a Design Tool 
Chapter 18 From Structure to User Interface 
Chapter 19 Iterating with a Prototype 
Chapter 20 Putting It into Practice
17833647
Beyond Usability: Evaluation Aspects of Visual Analytic Environments
A new field of research, visual analytics, has been introduced. This has been defined as "the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces" (Thomas and Cook, 2005). Visual analytic environments, therefore, support analytical reasoning using visual representations and interactions, with data representations and transformation capabilities, to support production, presentation, and dissemination. As researchers begin to develop visual analytic environments, it is advantageous to develop metrics and methodologies to help researchers measure the progress of their work and understand the impact their work has on the users who work in such environments. This paper presents five areas or aspects of visual analytic environments that should be considered as metrics and methodologies for evaluation are developed. Evaluation aspects need to include usability, but it is necessary to go beyond basic usability. The areas of situation awareness, collaboration, interaction, creativity, and utility are proposed as the five evaluation areas for initial consideration. The steps that need to be undertaken to develop systematic evaluation methodologies and metrics for visual analytic environments are outlined
16012075
Organizational Learning and Communities-of-Practice: Toward a Unified View of Working, Learning, and Innovation
Recent ethnographic studies of workplace practices indicate that the ways people actually work usually differ fundamentally from the ways organizations describe that work in manuals, training programs, organizational charts, and job descriptions. Nevertheless, organizations tend to rely on the latter in their attempts to understand and improve work practice. We examine one such study. We then relate its conclusions to compatible investigations of learning and of innovation to argue that conventional descriptions of jobs mask not only the ways people work, but also significant learning and innovation generated in the informal communities-of-practice in which they work. By reassessing work, learning, and innovation in the context of actual communities and actual practices, we suggest that the connections between these three become apparent. With a unified view of working, learning, and innovating, it should be possible to reconceive of and redesign organizations to improve all three.
1567710
Provenance for Visualizations: Reproducibility and Beyond
The demand for the construction of complex visualizations is growing in many disciplines of science, as users are faced with ever increasing volumes of data to analyze. In this paper, the authors present VisTrails, an open source provenance-management system that provides infrastructure for data exploration and visualization. VisTrails transparently records detailed provenance of exploratory computational tasks and leverages this information beyond just the ability to reproduce and share results. In particular, it uses this information to simplify the process of exploring data through visualization.
16728784
Process-centric business intelligence
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to deliver an insight into the interaction effects of process‐oriented management and business intelligence (BI).Design/methodology/approach – The paper takes up publications from the fields of BI and business process management and analyzes the state‐of‐the‐art of process‐centric business intelligence (PCBI). To highlight the potentials and limitations of the concept, two exemplary use cases are presented and discussed in depth. Furthermore, a vision for the technical implementation is sketched.Findings – PCBI is found to play an important role in an organization's strive for competitiveness. The concept's potential benefits are significant. However, the overall levels of adoption and maturity of the concept within real‐world organizations appear to be rather low at the moment.Research limitations/implications – The paper discusses solely two exemplary use cases – the most that could be done within the scope of a journal publication. Therefore, the explanatory power...
15483568
Sizing the horizon: the effects of chart size and layering on the graphical perception of time series visualizations
We investigate techniques for visualizing time series data and evaluate their effect in value comparison tasks. We compare line charts with horizon graphs - a space-efficient time series visualization technique - across a range of chart sizes, measuring the speed and accuracy of subjects' estimates of value differences between charts. We identify transition points at which reducing the chart height results in significantly differing drops in estimation accuracy across the compared chart types, and we find optimal positions in the speed-accuracy tradeoff curve at which viewers performed quickly without attendant drops in accuracy. Based on these results, we propose approaches for increasing data density that optimize graphical perception.
6774768
Designing a cross-channel information management tool for workers in enterprise task forces
This paper presents a research project on the design of a cross-channel information management tool for knowledge workers: we focus on IT services professionals in a large enterprise who work in multiple ad hoc task forces. Through three rounds of investigation, we characterized their work practices and needs, specified their requirements for a cross-channel information management tool, and designed and evaluated a prototype to address these needs. We found that these workers shared the problem of managing information across multiple channels, requiring better support for aggregating, filtering, and organizing this information. We report the requirements elicited and the prototypes built during the design process.
18034610
User analysis in HCI - the historical lessons from individual differences research
Abstract User analysis is a crucial aspect of user-centered systems design, yet Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) has yet to formulate reliable and valid characterizations of users beyond gross distinctions based on task and experience. Individual differences research from mainstream psychology has identified a stable set of characteristics that would appear to offer potential application in the HCI arena. Furthermore, in its evolution over the last 100 years, research on individual differences has faced many of the problems of theoretical status and applicability that are common to HCI. In the present paper, the relationship between work in cognitive and differential psychology and current analyses of users in HCI is examined. It is concluded that HCI could gain significant predictive power if individual differences research was related to the analysis of users in contemporary systems design.
13366481
Understanding Human-Computer Interaction for Information Systems Design
Over the past 35 years, information technology has permeated every business activity. This growing use of information technology promised an unprecedented increase in end-user productivity Yet this promise is unfulfilled, due primarily to a lack of understanding of end-user behavior End-user productivity is tied directly to functionality and ease of learning and use. Furthermore, system designers lack the necessary guidance and tools to apply effectively what is known about human-computer interaction (CHI) during systems design. Software developers need to expand their focus beyond functional requirements to include the behavioral needs of users. Only when system functions fit actual work and the system is easy to learn and use will the system be adopted by office workers and business professionals. 
 
The large, interdisciplinary body of research literature suggest HCI's importance as well as its complexity. This article is the product of an extensive effort to integrate the diverse body of HCI literature into a comprehensible framework that provides guidance to system designers. HCI design is divided into three major divisions system model, action language, and presentation language. The system model is a conceptual depiction of system objects and functions. The basic premise is that the selection of a good system model provides direction for designing action and presentation languages that determine the system's look and feel. Major design recommendation sin each division are identified along with current research trends and future research issues.
144857199
Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness
Perface. One: Theory. 1. Theories of Action. 2. Evaluating Theories of Action. Two: Action. 3. Diagnosing Theories-in-Use. 4. Model I. 5. Model II. 6. Transition from Model I to Model II. 7. Learining Model-II Behavior. Three: Practice. 8. Issues in Professional Education. 9. Implications for Professional Competence and Practice. 10. Redesigning Professional Education. NotesReferencesIndex.
145405721
Psychology of Intelligence Analysis
Abstract : This volume pulls together and republishes, with some editing, updating, and additions, articles written during 1978-86 for internal use within the CIA Directorate of Intelligence. Four of the articles also appeared in the Intelligence Community journal Studies in Intelligence during that time frame. The information is relatively timeless and still relevant to the never-ending quest for better analysis. The articles are based on reviewing cognitive psychology literature concerning how people process information to make judgments on incomplete and ambiguous information. I selected the experiments and findings that seem most relevant to intelligence analysis and most in need of communication to intelligence analysts. I then translated the technical reports into language that intelligence analysts can understand and interpreted the relevance of these findings to the problems intelligence analysts face. The result is a compromise that may not be wholly satisfactory to either research psychologists or intelligence analysts. Cognitive psychologists and decision analysts may complain of oversimplification, while the non-psychologist reader may have to absorb some new terminology. Unfortunately, mental processes are so complex that discussion of them does require some specialized vocabulary.
15108638
Developing qualitative metrics for visual analytic environments
In this paper, we examine reviews for the entries to the 2009 Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST) Symposium Challenge. By analyzing these reviews we gained a better understanding of what is important to our reviewers, both visualization researchers and professional analysts. This is a bottom-up approach to the development of heuristics to use in the evaluation of visual analytic environments. The meta-analysis and the results are presented in this paper.
12752531
A Design Theory for Systems That Support Emergent Knowledge Processes
This paper addresses the design problem of providing IT support for emerging knowledge processes (EKPs). EKPs are organizational activity patterns that exhibit three characteristics in combination: an emergent process of deliberations with no best structure or sequence; requirements for knowledge that are complex (both general and situational), distributed across people, and evolving dynamically; and an actor set that is unpredictable in terms of job roles or prior knowledge. Examples of EKPs include basic research, new product development, strategic business planning, and organization design. EKPs differ qualitatively from semi-structured decision making processes; therefore, they have unique requirements that are not all thoroughly supported by familiar classes of systems, such as executive information systems, expert systems, electronic communication systems, organizational memory systems, or repositories. Further, the development literature on familiar classes of systems does not provide adequate guidance on how to build systems that support EKPs. Consequently, EKPs require a new IS design theory, as explicated by Walls et al. (1992). 
 
We created such a theory while designing and deploying a system for the EKP of organization design. The system was demonstrated through subsequent empirical analysis to be successful in supporting the process. Abstracting from the experience of building this system, we developed an IS design theory for EKP support systems. This new IS design theory is an important theoretical contribution, because it both provides guidance to developers and sets an agenda for academic research. EKP design theory makes the development process more tractable for developers by restricting the range of effective features (or rules for selecting features) and the range of effective development practices to a more manageable set. EKP design theory also sets an agenda for academic research by articulating theory-based principles that are subject to empirical, as well as practical, validation.
9766663
A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries: Boundary Objects in New Product Development
This study explores the premise that knowledge in new product development proves both a barrier to and a source of innovation. To understand the problematic nature of knowledge and the boundaries that result, an ethnographic study was used to understand how knowledge is structured differently across the four primary functions that are dependent on each other in the creation and production of a high-volume product. A pragmatic view of 'knowledge in practice' is developed, describing knowledge as localized, embedded, and invested within a function and how, when working across functions, consequences often arise that generate problematic knowledge boundaries. The use of a boundary object is then described as a means of representing, learning about, and transforming knowledge to resolve the consequences that exist at a given boundary. Finally, this pragmatic view of knowledge and boundaries is proposed as a framework to revisit the differentiation and integration of knowledge.
3048775
Entity quick click: rapid text copying based on automatic entity extraction
Retyping text phrases can be time consuming. As a result, techniques for copying text from one software application to another, such as copy-and-paste and drag-and-drop are now commonplace. However, even these techniques can be too slow in situations where many phrases need to be copied. In the special case where the phrases to be copied represent syntactically identifiable entities, such as person names, company names, telephone numbers, or street addresses, much faster phrase copying is possible. We describe entity quick click, an approach that reduces both the amount of cursor travel and the number of button presses needed to copy a phrase.
166973590
How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation
Japanese companies have become successful because of their skill and expertise at creating organizational knowledge. Organizational knowledge is not only the creation of new knowledge, but also disseminating it throughout the organization, and embodying it in products, services, and systems. Knowledge is the new competitive resource, and its creation and utilization is a dynamic, interactive process. Knowledge is used as the basic unit of analysis to explain firm behavior; a business creates and processes knowledge. Knowledge may be explicit or tacit; this study treats them as complements that form a dynamic relationship. The individual interacts with the organization through knowledge; knowledge creation occurs at the individual, group, and organizational levels. The forms of knowledge interaction (between tacit and explicit, and between individual and firm) produce four major processes of knowledge conversion: from tacit to explicit, explicit to explicit, explicit to tacit, and tacit to tacit. Japanese companies create new knowledge by converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. The book has three goals: to formalize a generic model of organizational knowledge creation, explain why certain Japanese companies have been continuously successful in innovation, and develop a universal model of company management based on convergence of knowledge practices in Japan and the world. First presents a philosophical exposition of knowledge and its application to managemen, then the core concepts of knowledge creation, with four modes of knowledge conversion. The Matsushita company is used to illustrate the process model of organization knowledge creation. The two traditional styles of management (top-down and bottom-up) are shown not to be effective in fostering the dynamic necessary to create organizational knowledge, and a new organization structure considered most conducive to knowledge creation is proposed. (TNM)
1389930
Graphical Histories for Visualization: Supporting Analysis, Communication, and Evaluation
Interactive history tools, ranging from basic undo and redo to branching timelines of user actions, facilitate iterative forms of interaction. In this paper, we investigate the design of history mechanisms for information visualization. We present a design space analysis of both architectural and interface issues, identifying design decisions and associated trade-offs. Based on this analysis, we contribute a design study of graphical history tools for Tableau, a database visualization system. These tools record and visualize interaction histories, support data analysis and communication of findings, and contribute novel mechanisms for presenting, managing, and exporting histories. Furthermore, we have analyzed aggregated collections of history sessions to evaluate Tableau usage. We describe additional tools for analyzing userspsila history logs and how they have been applied to study usage patterns in Tableau.
15836969
A Model and Framework for Visualization Exploration
Visualization exploration is the process of extracting insight from data via interaction with visual depictions of that data. Visualization exploration is more than presentation; the interaction with both the data and its depiction is as important as the data and depiction itself. Significant visualization research has focused on the generation of visualizations (the depiction); less effort has focused on the exploratory aspects of visualization (the process). However, without formal models of the process, visualization exploration sessions cannot be fully utilized to assist users and system designers. Toward this end, we introduce the P-Set model of visualization exploration for describing this process and a framework to encapsulate, share, and analyze visual explorations. In addition, systems utilizing the model and framework are more efficient as redundant exploration is avoided. Several examples drawn from visualization applications demonstrate these benefits. Taken together, the model and framework provide an effective means to exploit the information within the visual exploration process
1272606
Characterizing Users' Visual Analytic Activity for Insight Provenance
Insight provenance – a historical record of the process and rationale by which an insight is derived – is an essential requirement in many visual analytics applications. Although work in this area has relied on either manually recorded provenance (for example, user notes) or automatically recorded event-based insight provenance (for example, clicks, drags and key-presses), both approaches have fundamental limitations. Our aim is to develop a new approach that combines the benefits of both approaches while avoiding their deficiencies. Toward this goal, we characterize users' visual analytic activity at multiple levels of granularity. Moreover, we identify a critical level of abstraction, Actions, that can be used to represent visual analytic activity with a set of general but semantically meaningful behavior types. In turn, the action types can be used as the semantic building blocks for insight provenance. We present a catalog of common actions identified through observations of several different visual analytic systems. In addition, we define a taxonomy to categorize actions into three major classes based on their semantic intent. The concept of actions has been integrated into our lab's prototype visual analytic system, HARVEST, as the basis for its insight provenance capabilities.
107048608
iMonitor: Architecture of Web-based Collaborative Visual Analytics System for Bridge Management
Bridge management is a collaborative work that requires inputs and decisions from multiple personals and hierarchies. The proper and effective circulation of information plays an important role in prioritizing the bridge maintenance decisions. While traditional bridge management systems can provide information for individual bridge manager, those systems are not designed to effectively facilitate the essential collaborations that are required in managing bridges. In this paper, the authors propose architecture of web-based collaborative visual analytics system, iMonitor. Based on the authors nationwide survey and interviews with bridge managers, the authors designed iMonitor to support information analysis on both individual level and collaboration level. For individual bridge managers, iMonitor provides highly customizable interfaces that can enables interactive exploration, information correlation, and domain-oriented data analysis. For groups of collaborators, iMonitor introduce methods to capture and annotate findings, prepare evidence, and collaboratively create and share bridge maintenance reports. When demoed to bridge managers of North Carolina Department of Transportations, the authors validated that our system can provide bridge managers with the essential feature of performing in-depth bridge analysis that are in accordance to their typical workflow. The authors further plan to move iMonitor from internal testing to real-world environments.
6230471
Recovering Reasoning Processes from User Interactions
Understanding how analysts use visual-analytics (VA) tools can help reveal their reasoning processes when using these tools. By examining analysts' interaction logs, the authors identified the analysts' strategies, methods, and findings when using a financial VA tool.
10910027
Glass Box: An Instrumented Infrastructure for Supporting Human Interaction with Information
In this paper, we discuss the challenges involved in developing an infrastructure to support a new generation of analytic tools for information analysts. The infrastructure provides data for establishing context about what the analyst is doing with the analytic tools, supports an integration environment to allow suites of tools to work together, and supports evaluation of the analytic tools. We discuss the functionality of the Glass Box, the challenges of evaluating adaptive systems including the capture of data for evaluation metrics, and lessons learned from our experiences to date.
2241519
Capturing and supporting the analysis process
Visual analytics tools provide powerful visual representations in order to support the sense-making process. In this process, analysts typically iterate through sequences of steps many times, varying parameters each time. Few visual analytics tools support this process well, nor do they provide support for visualizing and understanding the analysis process itself. To help analysts understand, explore, reference, and reuse their analysis process, we present a visual analytics system named CzSaw (See-Saw) that provides an editable and re-playable history navigation channel in addition to multiple visual representations of document collections and the entities within them (in a manner inspired by Jigsaw [24]). Conventional history navigation tools range from basic undo and redo to branching timelines of user actions. In CzSaw's approach to this, first, user interactions are translated into a script language that drives the underlying scripting-driven propagation system. The latter allows analysts to edit analysis steps, and ultimately to program them. Second, on this base, we build both a history view showing progress and alternative paths, and a dependency graph showing the underlying logic of the analysis and dependency relations among the results of each step. These tools result in a visual model of the sense-making process, providing a way for analysts to visualize their analysis process, to reinterpret the problem, explore alternative paths, extract analysis patterns from existing history, and reuse them with other related analyses.
17508072
Knowledge precepts for design and evaluation of information visualizations
The design and evaluation of most current information visualization systems descend from an emphasis on a user's ability to "unpack" the representations of data of interest and operate on them independently. Too often, successful decision-making and analysis are more a matter of serendipity and user experience than of intentional design and specific support for such tasks; although humans have considerable abilities in analyzing relationships from data, the utility of visualizations remains relatively variable across users, data sets, and domains. In this paper, we discuss the notion of analytic gaps, which represent obstacles faced by visualizations in facilitating higher-level analytic tasks, such as decision-making and learning. We discuss support for bridging these gaps, propose a framework for the design and evaluation of information visualization systems, and demonstrate its use.
6070929
Knowledge Encapsulation Framework for Collaborative Social Modeling
This paper describes the Knowledge Encapsulation Framework (KEF), a suite of tools to enable knowledge inputs (relevant, domain-specific facts) to modeling and simulation projects, as well as other domains that require effective collaborative workspaces for knowledge-based task. This framework can be used to capture evidence (e.g., trusted material such as journal articles and government reports), discover new evidence (covering both trusted and social media), enable discussions surrounding domain-specific topics and provide automatically generated semantic annotations for improved corpus investigation. The current KEF implementation is presented within a wiki environment, providing a simple but powerful collaborative space for team members to review, annotate, discuss and align evidence with their modeling frameworks. The novelty in this approach lies in the combination of automatically tagged and user-vetted resources, which increases user trust in the environment, leading to ease of adoption for the collaborative environment.
134469
Connecting the dots with related notes
During visual analysis, users must often connect insights discovered at various points of time to understand implicit relations within their analysis. This process is often called "connecting the dots." In this paper, we describe an algorithm to recommend related notes from a user's past analysis based on his/her current line of inquiry during an interactive visual exploration process. We have implemented the related notes algorithm in HARVEST, a web based visual analytic system.
1412879
Iterative integration of visual insights during patent search and analysis
Patents are an important economic factor in todays globalized markets. Therefore, the analysis of patent information has become an inevitable task for a variety of interest groups. The retrieval of relevant patent information is an integral part of almost every patent analysis scenario. Unfortunately, the complexity of patent material inhibits a straightforward retrieval of all relevant patent documents and leads to iterative, time-consuming approaches in practice. With ‘PatViz’, a new system for interactive analysis of patent information has been developed to leverage iterative query refinement. PatViz supports users in building complex queries visually and in exploring patent result sets interactively. Thereby, the visual query module introduces an abstraction layer that provides uniform access to different retrieval systems and relieves users of the burden to learn different complex query languages. By establishing an integrated environment it allows for interactive reintegration of insights gained from visual result set exploration into the visual query representation. We expect that the approach we have taken is also suitable to improve iterative query refinement in other Visual Analytics systems.
17448672
Entity-based collaboration tools for intelligence analysis
Software tools that make it easier for analysts to collaborate as a natural part of their work will lead to better analysis that is informed by more perspectives. We are interested to know if software tools can be designed that support collaboration even as they allow analysts to find documents and organize information (including evidence, schemas, and hypotheses). We have modified the Entity Workspace system, described previously, to test such designs. We have evaluated the resulting design in both a laboratory study and a study where it is situated with an analysis team. In both cases, effects on collaboration appear to be positive. Key aspects of the design include an evidence notebook optimized for organizing entities (rather than text characters), information structures that can be collapsed and expanded, visualization of evidence that emphasizes events and documents (rather than emphasizing the entity graph), and a notification system that finds entities of mutual interest to multiple analysts.
11864565
Model-driven Visual Analytics
We describe a visual analytics (VA) infrastructure, rooted on techniques in machine learning and logic-based deductive reasoning that will assist analysts to make sense of large, complex data sets by facilitating the generation and validation of models representing relationships in the data. We use logic programming (LP) as the underlying computing machinery to encode the relations as rules and facts and compute with them. A unique aspect of our approach is that the LP rules are automatically learned, using Inductive Logic Programming, from examples of data that the analyst deems interesting when viewing the data in the high-dimensional visualization interface. Using this system, analysts will be able to construct models of arbitrary relationships in the data, explore the data for scenarios that fit the model, refine the model if necessary, and query the model to automatically analyze incoming (future) data exhibiting the encoded relationships. In other words it will support both model-driven data exploration, as well as data-driven model evolution. More importantly, by basing the construction of models on techniques from machine learning and logic-based deduction, the VA process will be both flexible in terms of modeling arbitrary, user-driven relationships in the data as well as readily scale across different data domains.
6445912
Defining and applying knowledge conversion processes to a visual analytics system
Knowledge-assisted visualization has been a fast growing field because it directly integrates and utilizes domain knowledge to produce effective data visualization. However, most existing knowledge-assisted visualization applications focus on integrating domain knowledge that is tailored only for specific analytical tasks. This reflects not only the different understandings of what ''knowledge'' is in visualization, but also the difficulties in generalizing and reapplying knowledge to new problems or domains. In this paper, we differentiate knowledge into two types, tacit and explicit, and suggest four conversion processes between them (internalization, externalization, collaboration, and combination) that could be included in knowledge-assisted visualizations. We demonstrate the applications of these four processes in a bridge visual analytical system for the US Department of Transportation and discuss their roles and utilities in real-life scenarios.