Hierarchical visual filtering, pragmatic and epistemic actions for database visualization

Abstract

Visualization techniques of all sorts suffer from visual cluttering, the occlusion of visual information due to the overlap of graphical items; and from excessive complexity in analytical tasks due to multiple parallel perspectives. To cope with these problems, we introduce Hierarchical Visual Filtering, a novel interaction principle based on pragmatic and epistemic actions. Pragmatic actions here mean that the analyst is able to visually select and filter information, determining visual configurations that reveal different perspectives; epistemic actions mean that the analyst can record, annotate, and recall intermediate visualizations created pragmatically. To do so, we use a tree-like organization to keep multiple visualization workspaces linked according to the analytical decisions took by the user. Our goal is to promote an innovative systematization that can augment the potential for database visual inspection, and for visualization systems in general. It is our contention that Hierarchical Visual Filtering can inspire a novel scheme of visualization environments in which space limitations and complexity are treated by means of interactive tasks.