Task abstractions

Why?

Abstract tasks

Abstract data and views

Why?

What?

How?

Methods

Why?

What?

How?
Why?

What?

How?
Why?

What?

How?

Task abstraction: need

Transforming task descriptions from domain-specific language into
abstract form allows you to compare them between different
domains.
If you talk with domain-specific language used by end-users,
everything may seem very different when its not true and its just
misleading.
Furthermore, task abstraction can guide the design of data
abstraction.
The reasons that justify why visual analytic tools are used can be
decomposed in terms of the associated actions (verbs) and the
targets (nouns).

Actions: why?

Why?

There are three levels of actions that could be

considered as targets for users:
1. Why is the visualization being used?
2. What kind of search is performed based on
whether the target and the location are known
or not?
3. What kind of query is made based on the
results of the previous question?
Each of these levels has a separate set of options.

Use
Search
Query

Use

Actions: why is being used?

Buscar
Preguntar

Use

Present
information to
third parties

Consume

Produce

information

information

Discover
new knowledge

Generate

Verify

Enjoy
a casual
intereset

Usar

Actions: what kind of search?

Search
Preguntar

Search
Target known

Target unknown

Location
known

Lookup

Browse

Location
unknown

Locate

Explore

Actions: what kind of query?

Usar
Buscar
Query

Query

Identify

Compare

Summarize

One

Some

All

Targets: why?

Why?

Previous actions are performed on the targets, in the senses of those

aspects of the data that are of interest to users.
The concept of target arises explicitly with the actions of search and
query.
With the actions related to use, it can be more implicit, but still
obvious: eg., items that the user has to present or to show.

Targets: what is used?

Attributes

All data

Trends

Outliers

Features

One

Multiple

Networks

Spatial
data

Topology

Shape

Distribution
Extremes
Value

Dependency

Correlation

Similarity

Path

Design choices: how?

How?

The third element in the analysis is how the different design options
are built to create and manipulate the visualizations.
In this case, we use verbs again.

Design choices: how?

Encode

Manipulate

Facet

Reduce

Arrange

Map

Change

Juxtapose

Filter

Express

Define visual marks

and channels

Select

Partition

Aggregate

Navigate

Superimpose

Embed

Separate
Order
Align
Use

Analysis example: SpaceTree vs. TreeJuxtaposer

These are two systems that offer different solutions to the question how?,
but have the same context for the questions why? and what?
TreeJuxtaposer (Munzner03)
SpaceTree (Grosjean02)

Analysis example: SpaceTree vs. TreeJuxtaposer

What?: a large tree.
Why?: provide colleagues a path of interest between two nodes of the tree.
More specifically, both tools allow highlight paths between nodes in the tree.
Both systems allow users to navigate through the tree and select a path, with
the result that are coded differently from those not selected (highlighting).
The systems differ in the way they manipulate and rearrange the visual
elements.
SpaceTree implements the selection by changing what is displayed in the
view, adding and filtering automatically unselected items.
TreeJuxtaposer allows users reorganize tree zones to ensure visibility of
certain areas of interest.

Analysis example:
SpaceTree vs. TreeJuxtaposer

Why?

Tree

Encoding

Encoding

Actions

Navigate

Navigate

Present

Select

Select

Locate

Filter

Arrange

Identify

Aggregate

TreeJuxtaposer

Target
Path between
nodes

SpaceTree

What?

How?

Example deriving one attribute: Strahler

number
One of the most common problems visualizing trees or complex
networks is to find a simpler representation of the topology of these
structures to collect their most important features.
One option is to calculate a new derived attribute that characterizes
the importance of each node in the graph and perform filtering based
on this new attribute.
We can use the Strahler number, devised in hydrology to characterize
the ramifications of river basins, which has been adapted and
extended for visualizing trees and networks [Auber02].
The most central nodes have very high values, while more peripheral
nodes have very low values.

Example deriving one attribute: Strahler

number

4.600 Nodes

520.000 Nodes

Example deriving one attribute:

Strahler number

Task 1

Why?

What?

Task 2

Input: Tree

Input: Tree

Encoding

Output:
Quantitative
attributes at
nodes

Output:
Quantitative
attributes at
nodes

Reduce

Actions

Derive

Summarize
Target
Topology

Filter

How?

References
Tamara Munzner. Visualization Analysis and Design. A K Peters Visualization
Series. CRC Press. Oct 2014.
Stuart K. Card, Jock Mackinlay and Ben Shneiderman. Readings in Information
Visualization: Using Vision to Think. Morgan Kaufmann, 1999.
[Grosjean02]: J. Grosjean, C. Plaisant, B. Bederson; SpaceTree: Supporting
Exploration in Large Node Link Tree, Design evolution and Empirical Evaluation,
In Proc. IEEE Symp. On Information Visualization (InfoVis), pp. 57-64, 2002.
[Munzner03]: T. Munzner et al.; TreeJuxtaposer: Scalable Tree Comparison Using
Focus+Context With Guaranteed Visibility; ACM TOG, 22:3 (2003), 453-462
[Heer12]: J. Heer, B. Shneiderman; Interactive Dynamics for Visual Analysis;
ACM Queue 10:2 (2012), 30-55
[Auber02]: D. Auber; Using Strahler numbers for real time visual exploration of
huge graphs; In Int. Conf. On Computer Vision and Graphics, pp. 56-69, 2002.

Actions: present
Present refers to the use of visualization to communicate information
to third parties, to tell a story with data support or to guide an
audience through a series of training activities.
Presentations can be used to make decisions, planning, forecasting or
educate.
A crucial aspect of the presentations is that visualization is being used
to communicate to an audience something well known a priori.
In other contexts, present can be synonymous to explain.

Actions: discover
Discover refers to use visualization to find new knowledge.
The output of this task will be the generation of new hypotheses.
Its use also includes the verification of hypotheses.
Explore is a synonym to discover.

Actions: enjoy
Enjoy refers to the use of visualization without any preconceived goal,
just to satisfy curiosity and enjoyment of its users.
A difficult issue to solve is
to match the objectives of
the visualization designer
with those of its users.
Eg.: NameVoyager

Actions: produce

In this case, the goal for the visualization users will be to generate new
material.
This time, three objectives are sought:
Annotate:
Associate new textual or graphical information to one or more
preexisting visual elements.
If the annotation is associated with data items, it can be considered
as a new attribute.
Record:
Permanently save or capture the visual elements.
Examples: screenshots, lists of items selected or marked locations,
parameter specification, interaction logs or annotations.
Derive

Actions: produce
This time, three objectives are sought :
Annotate
Record
Derive:
New data are generated from existing ones, either in terms of attributes or
datasets.
It is one of the key parts in the design process of visualizations: viewing the
data as is or make any change.
This operation involves the definition of new abstract data types that
havent been specified by users.
Sometimes it is of interest to create derived attributes that extend the
attribute collection of the original dataset through a transformation that
generates a new visual coding that solves the original problem.
Eg.: computing the difference between two functions.

Actions: search

All of the high-level use cases require the user to search for elements
of interest within the visualization as a mid-level goal.
We can find four choices:
Lookup: when users know both what and where to look.
Locate: when users know what to look, but dont know where.
Browse: when users know where to look, but dont know what.
Explore: when users dont have specific references of what and
where to look.

Actions: query

Once you have found the target or targets of the search, the next
level will be to query about the items to:
Identify: refers to a single target.
Compare: refers to multiple targets. Usually a more complex task
than identification.
Summarize: refers to all elements. A synonym could be an
overview.

Targets: all data

Three targets can be distinguished:
Trends: is a high level characterization of the data pattern. Eg.:
increases, decreases, peaks, troughs, plateaus,
Outliers: elements out of a particular pattern or trend.
Features: are any structure of interest defined at hand by the
specific task.

Targets: one attribute

Attributes are specific properties that can be visually coded.
The following targets can be defined for attributes:
Find an individual value.
Find the extremes across the range.
Find the distribution of all the values.

Targets: many attributes

Working with many attributes, the following targets can be found:
Dependencies: one attribute depends on a second if the values of
the first are directly dependent on the values of the second.
Correlations: there is a correlation between two attributes if you
notice a trend in the values of the first and it is linked to the values
of the second.
Similarities: for all values of two attributes a quantitative measure
is computed that allows to establish a ranking of similar or
different attributes.

Targets: networks
Networks define relationships between nodes and links.
The fundamental target in a network is to understand networks
topology, i.e., the interconnections structure.
A more specific topology target would be the study of paths, defined
as a sequence of one or more links that connect two nodes.

Targets: spatial data

The most common target of spatial data is to understand and
compare shapes.

Design choices: encode

The choice of how to visually encode data is one of the central
aspects of the design.
In the visual encoding we distinguish between the definition of visual
marks and channels and the actions associated with the spatial
arrangement of these elements.
Space arrangement can serve for:
Express values.
Separate, order or align elements.
Use it directly when the positions of the data are part of the
dataset.

Design choices: manipulate

Manipulate design choices allow to:
Change any aspect of the view.
Select elements in the view.
Navigate to change the visualization point of view.
Such manipulations involve an interaction that goes beyond static
visual encoding.

Design choices: facet

The view will be the visualization region where data are visually
encoded.
Facet data means to define how data are decomposed and where are
they shown in the available views.
One view can be a single region or be subdivided in different spatial
regions.
With this choice, we can decide on:
Juxtapose and coordinate multiple views.
Partition data between views.
Superpose different layers.

Design choices: reduce

Control over the number of items displayed on a visualization is
carried out with operations that involve the reduction of the dataset
size.
The three existing options, filter, aggregate and embed, are doubleway operations, and we will consider the same term for the
operations that reduce the number of items as well as for the
operations that increase their number.
These operations also affect the interaction that takes place with the
data.

Design choices: filter

Filtering operations are characterized by defining the inclusion and
exclusion criteria for visualizing items.
Some techniques allow to hide data and its subsequent restoration,
while others directly discard the data.

Design choices: aggregate

Aggregation increases the granularity of the visualized elements,
leading to fewer elements to view.
The complementary operation is segregate.
Aggregation typically involves the creation of new permanent data
derived from those existing.
If the operations of aggregation and segregation only generate
temporary data, then they are not usually called derived data.

Design choices: embed

Embedding allows to include both detailed and overview context
information in a single view.
Using this design option usually also involves to make use of the other
reduction operations, and even consider also the selection and
navigation operations.

F(x), G(x)
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0

Category 1

Category 2
F(x)

Category 3

Categora 4

Category 3

Category 4

G(x)

H(x)=F(x)-G(x)
3
2
1
0
-1

Category 1

Category2

-2
-3
-4
-5
H(x)