Author:

Keywords:

information visualization, interaction design, interactive tabletop and surfaces, geovisualization

Abstract:

In recent years, increasingly large and complex data sets about our environment are generated by a vast system of sensors and devices. With the widespread dissemination of online maps, location based services, and mobile phones a large laymen audience is accustomed to using geo-spatial data in everyday life. While geovisualization have been used to make these accessible and to enable interactive exploration of tempospatial data, they are often aimed only at experts visually analyzing the data. There is the need for simpler, less complex geovisualizations, in order to engage non-experts to understand data and gain insights. The general research objective of this dissertation is to facilitate exploring and understanding geospatial patterns, relationships, and trends for wider audience groups by designing comprehensible and easy-to-use interactive visualization systems for time-varying geo-referenced data. The general research question is how to design interactive geovisualization systems in such ways as to casually explore the visualized data, and ultimately gain insights into the presented domain.Within our research, we designed and evaluated three case studies from different domains. With every case study we investigated its domain while following the shared main goal of enabling a casual exploration of geo-referenced data on a large interactive screen displayed in semi-public space. All three case studies offered visualizations of information relevant to people in both everyday work and non-work situations. This ranged from classic geo-spatial data such as information on buildings and places (Venice Unfolding), to geo-referenced social network data (Muse), to mobility data based both on authoritative data sources, as well as sensors and smart phones (Touching Transport). We designed fully functional interactive visualization systems for multitouch tabletops, and exhibited them in different venues. The developed prototypes themselves also act as artifacts which encapsulate our design decisions, and thus embody parts of our research results.Prompted by the recurring issue of visualizing relations we created Sankey Arcs, a novel technique to visualize weighted relations, which also acted as an example for identifying a shared problem in case studies with similar characteristics, and designing a solution for it. Based on design objectives of the case studies, and the recurring task of constructing interactive geovisualizations, we developed the software library Unfolding Maps. We show that our software library supports a diverse set of users, and eases developing visualizations of geo-referenced data. We conclude with a critical reflection of our research approach, and a discussion of future perspectives in regards to follow-up work. With our case studies we provided innovative solutions to our research questions by bringing together computer science with design in order to create geovisualizations on interactive tabletops for casual users. In the intersecting research fields lie visualization and interaction challenges, and new ways of developing and evaluating such systems. With the work discussed in this thesis we hope to motivate and further enable a new design space for casual exploration of geovisualizations.