What does Visual Language have to do with Computer-Aided Visualization?
sunny
is that when producing visualizations of things that are not simply
rendered versions of the real thing, we don't have any guidance on how
best to represent information. So, visualization of the concrete is
usually straight-forward: the more accurate the better. But
visualization of the abstract is far more difficult. We draw up new
metaphors in an ad-hoc fashion and represent things in an arbitrary
way that generally fails to properly consider the human-machine
interface. We do this because we have not developed refined tools for
information representation nor conducted the enormous amount of
background research necessary to design for human cognition instead of
in spite of it.
Lion Kimbro
Is it hard? Or are we just not used to seeing visualizations
of the non-material?
I think the broader question of, "Why don't people visualize
the intangible?" sheds more light than the question, "Why don't
we have computer tools that help us visualize the intangible?"
"We draw up new
metaphors in an ad-hoc fashion and represent things in an arbitrary
way that generally fails to properly consider the human-machine
interface. We do this because we have not developed refined tools for
information representation nor conducted the enormous amount of
background research necessary to design for human cognition instead of
in spite of it."
The first part-- drawing up new metaphors, arbitrarily, seems to me
to be exactly the (easy) act that is required to visualize the
non-material.
This is what works in the construction of spoken words,
and I don't see why it doesn't work with visual language, as well.
That is, we do not worry that "automobile" is or is not the best
way or practice to designate "that horseless carriage running
automatically;" Rather, we just call it an auto-mobile, and over
the course of time, language just somehow evolves out "car."
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=car
I think that the reason we don't visualize the abstract, is simply
that we haven't been doing it, and it's socially awkward to start
doing so.
People ask all these questions, like, "How am I supposed to
read this?" and "What's the use of doing this?" and "Why are
you doing this?" and so on.
I see the interest in "guidance on how best to represent
information" as part of this play; Anticipating the question,
we feel the need to have a *really good reason* to say, "Well,
this is why we're doing this."
Any 10 year old, (including a reading 10 year old,) can tell you
that a comic book history lesson is more readily available than
a strict textual representation of the same, and yet the adult
society tut-tuts the comic, and favors the text. I think this is
closer to the source of the problem.
If people were used to visualizations of the intangible, we'd
have computers spitting out all kinds of information to match.
Semantic regions would be used to graph search results,
and so on. I don't think it's hard to make the graphs; People just
don't [know that they] want them, right now.