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The Application of Visualization
YUSONG ZHANG
8 March 2017
School of Computer Science
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, B15 2TT
Application of Visualization
Yusong Zhang
Abstract
Visualization, has a long history of utilization. In recent years, with the development of the Internet and
information explosion, it has shown a much greater effect. It helps people acquire information in an efficient
way. This paper address some complex work that helped by visualization. those work is hard to or cannot
done in other way. In the following part, it lists some visualization techniques which make data showed in a
simple way. Besides, it also explains the importance of visualization and what is a good Visualization.
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Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................... 3
Importance of visualization .................................................................................................................................................. 3
visualization guide user to manipulate the interface .............................................................................................. 3
visualization reduce the user’s memory burden....................................................................................................... 4
Visualization is helpful in user interface ...................................................................................................................... 4
Visualization in different domain........................................................................................................................................ 5
Medical science.................................................................................................................................................................... 5
Weather forecaster ............................................................................................................................................................. 5
Engineering: .......................................................................................................................................................................... 6
Data mining .......................................................................................................................................................................... 7
Technologies of generate visualization ............................................................................................................................ 8
Geometry-based technology .......................................................................................................................................... 8
Pixel-oriented technology ............................................................................................................................................... 8
icon-based technology ..................................................................................................................................................... 9
level-based technology .................................................................................................................................................... 9
Conclusion and future.......................................................................................................................................................... 10
Reference ................................................................................................................................................................................. 11
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Introduction
Visualization or visualisation (see spelling differences) is any technique for creating images, diagrams, or
animations to communicate a message. Visualization through visual imagery has been an effective way to
communicate both abstract and concrete ideas since the dawn of humanity. Examples from history include
cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphs, Greek geometry, and Leonardo da Vinci's revolutionary methods of
technical drawing for engineering and scientific purposes. (Wikipedia). Visualization is a form of expression
that makes the data, information, and knowledge visible. Visualization mainly applied in the situation that text
cannot explain or express clearly. Information that is complex and numerous. It can be used in many domains,
for example, various document, map, news, and data. It simplifies the result and makes it easy to understand.
They can improve cognition by utilizing graphics to enhance the human visual system's ability to see patterns
and trends. ( Heer, J., Bostock, M., & Ogievetskey, V. 2010). In 1958, Stephen Toulmin proposed a visualization
theoretical model, which later became an influential theory.
In the whole time of 200,000 that human exists, most of the time (over 97%), we perceive the environment
and gain information by graphics. Graphics has been the most important way to transmit information. The
character did not appear until 5500 years ago. Therefore, from the perspective of natural adaptation and
biological evolution, our brains are more sensitive to images. From the perspective of communication, the
picture as the carrier of the visual narrative is more interesting and attractive. With the outbreak of social
media, people are exposed to the astronomical information. It has been much more difficult for the company
to attract the attention of target customers. The formation of the picture as a general pleasing content, to
provide readers with a most enjoyable lightweight reading experience. This is not only to please the customer
but also to spread the corporate brand, it is a very good tool for the social marketers.
Importance of visualization
visualization guide user to manipulate the interface
Donald A. Norman in "The Design of Everyday things" said" If you get in trouble with using the product. should
I push or pull the door? Or how to use the vagaries modern computers and other electronic products. That's
not your fault. Don't blame yourself, you should blame the designer. This is a technical problem, and more
precisely, it is design fault" (Donald A. Norman.1988). Human-computer interaction is actually the interaction
of the user and the product designer. It is difficult for people to keep patient for the product. Advanced
technology, the technology itself is difficult to directly enjoy people's lives and must rely on a medium. The
visualization plays a role of making communication between people and computers simple. The role of
pleasure people. Of course, for the interface of the control. On the one hand, it needs mature technology for
background support, on the other hand, it needs the designer understand user's psychological demands,
thinking and visual habits. While the acquisition of visual information is more intuitive and important. Because
when people using the product. The first thing comes to their mind is "what they see", following by "what to
do"," how to do". Knowledge engineering believes that visual information consists of three parts: shape, colour,
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texture and other visual nature of the mind. The visual feeling associated with the emotion, listening, smell,
taste, touch, movement and other types of feeling. For example, if the user sees a left arrow, experience tells
us. Maybe it goes back, and the right arrow means go ahead next page. We put the mouse over the title and
the mouse turned to hand. The colour of the title also changed, then we can associate that maybe something
will happen if we click it. After the click, the effect appears, it is just same with what we expect, which is
undoubtedly a positive significance so that we are encouraged to enter and go to the next step.
visualization reduce the user’s memory burden
It is undeniable that the information stored in the language and code is more accurate and abundant, but the
acquisition of such information requires time-consuming and labour intensive training to be realized. The
graphic symbol, this way of communication is more intuitive, more general and universal. It relies on people's
thinking activity from specific things, generates relevant thinking and mixes into the subjective judgment,
which only needs people to use the daily natural skills. Based on direct experience in life and part of the
indirect experience to understand. This approach greatly reduces the gap of different age, different
nationalities and different ethnicities of cognitive impairment and memory burden, improve work efficiency.
Even people use different language, they can also understand the function of some button. Using the
microphone icon as an example, we can directly understand that it is a call function. For a small book with a
phone, we can understand through the daily experience that it is the address book. When people using the
image perception and image thinking, the efficiency of information transmission is greatly improved.
Visualization is helpful in user interface
Graphics User Interface(GUI), is a type of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices
through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces,
typed command labels or text navigation. (Wikipedia). Visualization is the basic technique for the build-up of
GUI theory. on the one hand, consider from the technical background. It does not give users operation trouble.
If the arrow key can be used to select a function option on a function list item. All the function list can be the
same. On the other hand, we should visualize this visual information to make the interface consistent. Having
unified font, unified tone, unified prompt symbols and buttons. Use this graphical visual information to make
user feel more consistent. The uniform style implies the systematic and stability of the function. It is difficult
for user to make a wise choice when the interface is rich of colour and have volatile style. Besides, the content
and the interface also should be consistent. Because the people also abstract the content as a picture. Scientific
research proves that “right brain plays a decisive role in visual, perceptual, image memory right brain plays a
decisive role in visual, perceptual, image memory, imagination, dream, imitation, music, graphics, emotion,
feeling and so on. It is the centre of dealing with appearance, image thinking, intuitive thinking and divergent
thinking”. With discontinuous, diffuse, holistic and other characteristics, known as the 'emotional brain' right
brain intuitive thinking function is often based on people to observe the things to get external information
(Liao Jun. 2013). Apple’s graphical user interface is undoubtedly one of the most successful design. It has been
the symbol of the interface progress in the past two decades. its visualization design principle that make apple
product so popular.
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Visualization in different domain
Medical science
Medical science is the most important domain that uses the technology of visualization and has influenced
by the technology deeply. It has been widely applied in diagnostic medicine，Plastic surgery and prosthetics
in the surgical planning and radiation treatment planning and so on. In those areas, the organs that people
cannot see can show as 2D and 3D images. Figure 1 is the brain MRI images of reconstructed threedimensional brain images that help physicians decide whether surgery is required or not. From this picture,
the condition of the disease brain can visually compare with the healthy brain. Which make a great progress
in medical domain. Before the invention of MRI, doctor and patient cannot have a direct way to see what
happened in the body.
Figure1 Reconstruction of the human brain based on MRI images.
Weather forecaster
Meteorological forecast involves a large number of visual content, from the ordinary cloud to the mesoscale
numerical forecast, a large number of meteorological observation data must be visualized to provide
information to the user. On the one hand, visualization can convert a large amount of data into a picture,
showing the isobaric surface, isothermal surface, vortex, the position and motion of the cloud, the position of
the storm area and its intensity, sharp size and direction. On the other hand, according to the global
meteorological monitoring data and calculation results, the global temperature distribution, air pressure
distribution, wind distribution wind direction and so on can be expressed in the form of images in different
periods, so as to study the global weather situation and its changing trend and forecast. Figure2 shows the
worldwide wind map, it just uses the different colour and thickness of the line to describe numerous data.
From the picture, people can clearly see each wind trend, with the speed, humidity, direction, and the area
that it covered. It give human the ability to forecast the weather, which is impossible in the ancient times.
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Figure2 wind map
Engineering:
Visualization has a wide range of applications in engineering, here we only use the application of
computational fluid dynamics is described as an example. Computational fluid dynamics is the numerical
solution of the fluid partial differential equation, the Navier-Stokes equations. These equations are the core
of applied research in aeronautics, automobile design, meteorological forecasting and oceanography, and
the basis for understanding hydrodynamics.
Visualization plays a very important role in the general process of flow field calculations. First of all,
visualization technology provides interactive design to facilitate and accelerate the definition of the object
process, the researchers can intuitively check the size of the object parts of the geometric size, whether there
is a gap between the parts, whether the surface is smooth and so on. Secondly, when meshing the
computational area, visualization can display the generated mesh in order to allow the researcher to examine,
adjust and scale the gridlines in time to form a spatial distribution of the forces. Finally, in the calculation and
calculation of the results of the analysis process, the role of visualization technology become greater.
Computer graphics can be used to provide a variety of methods to describe the distribution of various physical
quantities in the flow field, such as pressure, density and other scalar and velocity vectors. For the shock wave,
eddy current, stagnation and other flow field structure, can also be provided by computer graphics method
to describe. Moreover, the visualization of real-time interactive changes in the size of the screen and provide
a dynamic display, in order to let analysts see the flow of various phenomena in the details and do further
analysis. Figure3 shows the air flow around a high-speed car. The speed, temperature, and path of each air
flow can be clearly seen from this figure. By using this image, engineer is available to see the cooling condition,
the wind drag, turbulence, and noise. Then, they can use these data to build the car with the best shape. We
know that good car is depends on many things. In different environment, the concept of a good car is also
different. If we use the dynamic image. The different result of the wind trends can be plot in several conditions
like different speed and different running environment. We can change the parameter to find the compromise
solution of madding best car.
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Application of Visualization
Yusong Zhang
Figure3 air flow around high-speed car
Data mining
Visualization in data mining is an important part of information visualization. In data mining, visualization
enables people to visually understand complex patterns in multidimensional data. By observing the existence
of data in multidimensional and multiple graphical forms, it is possible to reveal data trends intuitively and
quickly. Data mining can also help to examine the data before modelling and verify the results of its data
mining tools. In addition, visualization plays an important role in the pattern discovery of local data. The above
features of data visualization provide a clear idea and intuitive image for data mining in analysing data in
many areas. Figure4 showed below is an data visualization of the market. By analyse the data that gathered
from users. Company know what their customers are felling so they can make improving with pacific target.
It gives several data in a good way, which makes the reader can get all related data with just one glance. The
leader make judgement rely on this. It is also a good tool for a country to publish policy.
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Figure4 market data mining
Technologies of generate visualization
Currently, based on the visualization, there are many techniques. Basically, according to the different principles,
it can be divided into divided into geometry-based technology, Pixel-oriented technology, icon-based
technology, level-based technology, image-based technology and distributed technology. (LIU Kan, ZHOU
Xiaozheng, ZHOU Dongru. 2002)The techniques showed below are some major techniques.
Geometry-based technology
Geometry-based technology includes Scatter plots, Landscapes, Projection Pursui, Parallel Coordinates etc. It
uses a geometric painting or geometric projection method to represent the data in the database. The parallel
coordinate method is one of the earliest proposed visualization techniques that represent n-dimensional data
in two-dimension. (Inselberg A, Dimsdale B.Parallel Coordinates. 1990). The basic principle is to map the ndimensional data attribute space through two equidistant parallel axes to a two-dimensional plane. Each axis
represents an attribute dimension. The range of values on the axis ranges from the minimum of the
corresponding attribute to the maximum distributed. In this way, each data can be represented by a line
segment on the n parallel axes according to its attribute values. Figure5 shows the represent of five 6-D data
and large database by using the parallel coordinate method. The advantage of this method is that for fewer
data sets, the user can see the n-dimensional attributes of each data on a two-dimensional plane, and for
large datasets, it is possible to reflect the relationship between the attributes and the data trend.
Figure5 parallel coordinate method
Pixel-oriented technology
Pixel-oriented technology is proposed by Keim (D.A.Keim 1996). And he developed VisDB visualization system.
The basic idea of pixel-oriented technology is to assign the value of each data item to a coloured screen pixel
and to represent the different data attributes in different windows. Pixel-oriented technology is to display as
much as possible on the screen related data items. Figure6 shows the one-pixel window of one six-dimension
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data and the result of the large database.
Figure6 Pixel-oriented technology
icon-based technology
The basic idea of using an icon is to use a simple part of the icon to represent the n-dimensional data
attributes. Icon-based visualization includes. This technique is suitable for the datasets with good expansion
properties on two-dimensional planes. Stick Figures is one typical method. Firstly, selects two attributes in the
multi-bit attribute as the basic x-y axis, where the change in the other attributes is represented by the
difference in the length or angle of the small branches. (Pickett. R M, Grinstein G G.Iconographic Displays for
Visualizing Multidimensional Data, Proc IEEE Conf. ). In figure7 these two data points have the same 2dimension value. But for the rest dimension, they are different.
Figure7 represent of two data point
level-based technology
level-based technology is designed for the database system with the hierarchical structure of data information,
such as personnel organizations, file catalogue, census data. The basic idea of the n-dimensional data space
is divided into several sub-spaces, these sub-spaces are still organized hierarchically and represent by
graphics. (Shneiderman B.1992)
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Figure8 A hierarchical structure
Conclusion and future
Visualization is a good way to transfer the information into the graphic formation for people to understand.
We have used this technology for such a long time, since the time of the invention of hieroglyphics until know,
it helps people to acquire knowledge. With the age of big data comes, the role of the visualization becomes
more important. The future is the world of data, everything is data. How can the complex large data sets,
obscure data reports become easy to read, cordial, easy to understand? Visualization is undoubtedly the best
choice. For its application, the scope is extremely extensive, such as business intelligence, government
decision-making, public services, marketing, news dissemination, geographic information, etc.
Healthcare professionals already use visualization to communicate medical information to their patients. A
firm grasp of health information enhances patients' decision-making capabilities and may improve the
practitioner-patient relationship (McCrorie, AD et al.2016). In the future, the visualization will be used in more
different areas. Combined with other techniques, the visualization will emancipate more potential. For
example, the aviation area. The global flight operation visualization system will be made, through a certain
period of time to run the flight of the flight data to visualize the show, the public can be very clear to
understand the overall distribution of global flights and operating situation. In the education area When
combining visualization with virtual reality. People can analyse information in an intuitional way, information
will become more interactive. Information graphics in the user interface has shown a huge role. In the future,
more graphical interactive information will give us greater convenience.
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