behaviorism: a framework for dynamic data visualization

Abstract

Abstract-While a number of information visualization software frameworks exist, creating new visualizations, especially those that involve novel visualization metaphors, interaction techniques, data analysis strategies, and specialized rendering algorithms, is still often a difficult process. To facilitate the creation of novel visualizations we present a new software framework, behaviorism, which provides a wide range of flexibility when working with dynamic information on visual, temporal, and ontological levels, but at the same time providing appropriate abstractions which allow developers to create prototypes quickly which can then easily be turned into robust systems. The core of the framework is a set of three interconnected graphs, each with associated operators: a scene graph for high-performance 3D rendering, a data graph for different layers of semantically-linked heterogeneous data, and a timing graph for sophisticated control of scheduling, interaction, and animation. In particular, the timing graph provides a unified system to add behaviors to both data and visual elements, as well as to the behaviors themselves. To evaluate the framework we look briefly at three different projects all of which required novel visualizations in different domains, and all of which worked with dynamic data in different ways: an interactive ecological simulation, an information art installation, and an information visualization technique.

Human Factors in Streaming Data Analysis: Challenges and Opportunities for Information Visualization

“…The nature of streaming data is to naturally accumulate with little to no bounds, requiring visualizations to accommodate this growth. Along with data accumulation, missing or incomplete data and heterogeneity of data are other problems that have been addressed in the visualization literature [FHL10, HSP14, Riv14, WSJ*14]. As shown in Figure , the following are the different data transformation strategies employed while designing visualizations for handling these problems.…”

Building dynamic 3D visualizations through ontology-guided interactions with domain knowledge and simulation models

“…Since these seminal projects, much research has been dedicated to designing visualization frameworks that employ the increasing power of hardware and leverage our increasing understanding of what makes interaction techniques effective (Troy and Moller, 2004). Recent examples include: Hannah (Einsfeld et al, 2007), a 3D user interface to synthesize desperate data within a single view; Behaviourism (Forbes et al, 2010), a Java/ OpenGL-based framework for creating 2D and 3D visualizations; and EditFlow (Benzaken et al, 2011), an information visualization framework built on top of a database management system. Most recent efforts in visualization framework design are focused on supporting the growing area of information visualization, which does not mesh well with the requirements of real-time simulation-based system.…”

Interactively exploring geotemporal relationships in demographic data via stretch projections

“…A more detailed analysis would aim to identify which interaction techniques are most suited to revealing certain relationships for structures in the data. For instance, the use of motion might be well-suited to demonstrate the effect of one variable in a multidimensional dataset [4,5,6]. …”