Creation and Collaboration: Engaging New Audiences for Information Visualization - Information Visualization: Human-Centered Issues and Perspectives - page 100

Fig. 1. A few of the many available information visualization tools, roughly mapped
according to targeted end-user and targeted goal. Light lines connect toolkits and
development environments to examples of visualizations created in them. Dark lines
roughly capture similar ranges of user/goal targets for relevant tools.
2.4 Tools
Note that most real-world uses of information visualization will form a combina-
tion of the use-cases and roles described in the preceding sections. A researcher
might program a new visualization technique to explore his complex data and
then present findings to a manager by sending a screenshot. In this case the
researcher takes on the roles of both consumer and developer and performs both
exploration and communication. Most current information visualization tools
and toolkits are geared towards one particular user skill and goal, although a
recent trend towards more flexible tools can be observed. To illustrate the rough
classification outlined in the previous subsections, in this section we give an
indicative sample of an end-user visualization tool for each user skill and goal
combination. Figure Fig. 1 illustrates a number of available visualization tools
categorized according to the skill level of the target user base and the degree to
which the tools support analytic and communicative tasks. Systems that span
a range of tasks or skills are presented as line segments indicating the range of
users and usage.
Expert Communication: In the bottom right corner of the matrix we find
information visualization tools and toolkits that are geared towards commu-
nicative use, but assume a significant amount of knowledge on suitable visual
techniques and their implementation. One such toolkit is Adobe's Flash develop-