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The combination of browsing with rapid, iterative building in a single applica-
tion (much like in spreadsheet programs) enables improvisational visualization,
in which it is possible to design and evaluate different ways of analyzing partic-
ular data sets in the form of rapid prototypes having more concrete and stable
collections of analytic functionality.
Novice Exploration and Analysis:
As far as we know, there are no tools
that truly allow novice users to interact with their data in the broadest sense
of exploration. This may result from an apparent fundamental tradeoff between
flexibility and accessibility in visual analysis, in that increased expressiveness ne-
cessitates greater expertise when it comes to data manipulation and visual repre-
sentation. Even in savvy exploration-analysis tools like Improvise that strive for
a balance between these factors, reproducing many common visual components
and techniques currently requires a high degree of visual language expressiveness
that necessitates a corresponding high level of expertise beyond that of most
novice users. Conversely, novice analysis-communication tools like Many Eyes
seek to increase visualization flexibility for broad audiences keenly interested in
modest analytic expressiveness as a means to better communicate ideas about
information. In between, analysis tools like Tableau/Show Me successfully oc-
cupy analysis niches that provide bounded but particularly useful forms of data
interaction to relatively broad audiences who are suciently motivated to devote
time and effort to modest training. It may well be that open-ended exploration
tools for novices will evolve from future research into ways of combining these
three seemingly complementary directions.
2.5 Directions
Current end user visualization tools are becoming more and more flexible in
the types of scenarios and goals they can handle. Tools like Many Eyes allow
novice users to create advanced visualizations with very little effort and also
support communicative use-cases by allowing flexible sharing of visualization
states. Tools like Improvise allow tight integration of many different types of
visualizations, but require some programming skills on the side of the end-user,
an expectation that is not always reasonable of domain experts dealing with the
visualization. Tableau allows end users to set up and pivot different types of ba-
sic visualizations in a fairly intuitive manner and the recent addition of Tableau
Server allows sharing of and commenting on these visualizations in an online envi-
ronment, making it also suitable for communicative purposes. Although flexible,
the only visualization types allowed are 2-dimensional small-multiple displays,
which limits the visualization and analysis types to basic business graphics.
In our opinion, the ultimate goal of letting novice users flexibly specify their
visualization needs and couple different types of views together has not been fully
realized yet. We expect that users' visual literacy will increase as information
visualization becomes more mainstream, and will start demanding advanced
visualizations beyond the trusted bar chart. Integrating advanced visualizations
in an flexible, collaborative and easy to understand framework for open-ended
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