Architectures to make Simple Visualisations Simple Systems Alan Dix Lancaster University and aQtive Russell Beale Birmingham University and aQtive Andy Wood aQtive

outline simple visualisation and dancing histograms onCue and appropriate intelligence pieTrees deeper inside onCue - Qbits ree 

dancing histograms

simple visualisation AVI98 paper (Geoff Ellis & Alan Dix) key concept –familiar paper representations (can be domain specific) –add interactivity –surprisingly powerful

stacked histograms

dancing histogram

doing it applet version –histogram 1 day –axes - another day!!! –load/save data –different file formats –etc. etc. full application ?

onCue

context sensitive link to resources –on the web –on the desktop –on the intranet component based framework easily extensible

the dancing histograms very useful a ing out some of the textile sites yo x's page at onCue in action histograms

kinds of data short text–search engines single word– thesaurus, spell check names– directory services post codes– maps, local info numbers– SumIt! (add them up) custom– order #, cust ref...

appropriate intelligence (a)be useful when it is right (b)be right often enough to be useful (c)not cause problems when it is wrong

how it works

dancing histograms in onCue table recogniser (½ day initially) turn applet into onCue service (½ day) usable Qbit in onCue later –improved recogniser (another day) –MS Excel service using same recogniser

pieTree ree   

pieTree simple data – pie chart hierarchical data–exploding pie (info at leaves) info on nodes too ??? file space usage web site log files ree 

web stats corporate/4000 [9000] –info.html3000 –press.html2000 community/3000 [8000] –user.html2000 –research.html1000 –developer.html2000 product/2000 [8000] –onCue/ 2000 [4000] online.html1000 download.html1000 –vfridge/ 1000 –support/ 1000 ree 

top level - pie chart corporate/4000 [9000] community/3000 [8000] product/2000 [8000] ree 

drilling corporate/4000 [9000] community/3000 [8000] product/2000 [8000] –onCue/ 2000 [4000] –vfridge/ 1000 –support/ 1000 ree 

deeper corporate/4000 [9000] community/3000 [8000] product/2000 [8000] –onCue/ 2000 [4000] online.html1000 download.html1000 –vfridge/ 1000 –support/ 1000 ree 

root hits /3000 [28000] –corporate/4000 [9000] –community/3000 [8000] –product/2000 [8000] ree 

pieTree - pros and cons + similar to pie charts + equal area / equal value + display inertia + temporal fusion – hard to judge area – poor for small interior values – less good near leaves ree 

recogniser heuristics  first element in each line a number (like du)  last number in each line a number (like web log)  some items prefixes of others (e.g. "/exercises" and "/exercises/images")  some lines indented more than others numbers for higher levels > lower levels ree 

deep inside

what happens inside aQtiveSpace –component framework Qbits –bit like beans, but different mixed initiative external and dynamic configuration

Qbit nodes data flow initiative

advantages external linkage –neither Qbit needs to know about the other mixed initiative styles –data-driven - using set/listen –demand driven - using get/give

underlying theory status-event analysis scope – includes human and computer power –equal footing for status and event phenomena implementation –understand status representation

more visualisation onCue ree 