Visual-Spatial Thinking in Digital Libraries —Top Ten Problems Chaomei Chen Brunel University June 28th 2001, Hotel Roanoke and Conference Center, Roanoke, VA, USA

TOP TEN UNSOLVED PROBLEMS IN PHYSICS Top Ten Problems with the Big Bang Getting There: The Ten Top Problems Left (By Jim Foley) Top Ten Visualization Problems (By Bill Hibbard) Top Ten Visualization Problems (By Bill Hibbard) ) Top Ten Problems in Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries Visual Interfaces to Digital Libraries

Getting There: The Ten Top Problems Left (By Jim Foley) 1. Fill the gap between image-based and geometric modeling techniques. 2. Fill the gap between motion-capture animation and simulation/procedural animation. 3. Creative information visualization. 4. Automated creation of information and scientific visualizations. 5. Abstracting away from reality. 6. Display more pixels. 7. Display fewer pixels. 8. Unified graphics architectures. 9. User interfaces for 3D creativity. 10. Truly immersive virtual reality.

3. Creative information visualization Information visualization involves creating representations of nongeometric information by adding geometry to the information. As a simple example, the set of values depicted in a pie chart doesn't have an inherent geometry. The pie chart geometry is added to create the visualization. Similarly, the tree or graph of an organization chart has no inherent geometry, only a topology. The geometry positions of the nodes and routing of the arcs is added in order to display the chart in an aesthetically pleasing and informative way. Sometimes a partial geometry is explicit in the abstract data- for instance, population data is explicitly associated with a geographic region, so the issue isn't where but how to depict the population information.

Bill Hibbard’s Top Ten Viz Problems: Visual Quality Bill Hibbard’s Top Ten Viz Problems: Visual Quality ACM SIGGRAPH Vol.33 No.2 May Make the spatial and temporal resolution of visual displays indistinguishable from physical reality. Display and geometry resolution, and response times to user interaction, must all be brought to human perceptual limits. 2.Integrate virtual reality with physical reality. This means eliminating the need for special helmets, glasses, gloves and wands, and embedding displays as part of the physical environment.

Bill Hibbard’s Top Ten Viz Problems: Integration 3.Integrate visualization with networking, voice, artificial vision, computation and data storage. 4.Optimize physical resources used to perform visual interactions.

Bill Hibbard’s Top Ten Viz Problems: Information 5.Find effective ways to visualize numerical information of high dimension. visualize non-numerical information 6.Find effective ways to visualize non-numerical information.

Bill Hibbard’s Top Ten Viz Problems: Interactions 7.Find effective visual idioms for direct manipulation user interactions with visualizations. 8.Find effective visual idioms for collaborative interactions among multiple users.

Bill Hibbard’s Top Ten Viz Problems: Abstractions 9.Define effective abstractions for the visualization and user interaction process. 10.Present abstractions to users in ways that reconcile expressiveness and ease- of-use.

Sample Session Headings in JCDL Digital Libraries for Education: Technology, Services, and User Studies The Open Archives Initiative: Perspectives on Metadata Harvesting Methods for Classifying and Organizing Content in Digital Libraries Approaches to Interoperability Among Digital Libraries Different Cultures Meet – Lessons Learned in Global Digital Library Development Digital Libraries and the Web: Technology and Trust Tools for Constructing and Using Digital Libraries Digital Library Collaborations in a World Community Systems Design and Evaluation for Undergraduate Learning Environments Techniques for Managing Distributed Collections Information Search and Retrieval in Digital Libraries High Tech or High Touch: Automation and Human Mediation in Libraries Scholarly Communication and Digital Libraries

Top Ten Problems: Attempt I Users, Tasks, and Strategies 1. Visual Information Retrieval 2. Visual Information Exploration 3. Visual Information Organization 4. Accommodating Individual Differences 5. Supporting Collaborative Work

Top Ten Problems: Attempt I The Big Picture 6. Information Visualization for Bibliometrics 7. Information Visualization for Scientometrics 8. Knowledge Tracking 9. Knowledge Discovery 10. Challenges in Designing and Deploying Tangible and Meaningful Visual-Spatial Metaphors in DL

Escher’s Tower of Babel

Information Visualization A new, peer-reviewed, international journal August 31 submissions of manuscripts September 30 notification of acceptance October 31 final version March 2002 publication in Volume 1 Issue 1