Teaching Information Visualization - Information Visualization: Human-Centered Issues and Perspectives - page 80

2. The second part is the largest one of my course. Here, I discuss the most
important interaction techniques at first, for example Dynamic Queries,
Zoom&Pan, and several Focus&Context related techniques. This component
is more or less geared to the InfoVis Reference Model [8], i.e., I distinguish
interaction by means of data transformations, visual mapping, and view
transformations. I use actual research papers to exemplify the different ap-
proaches. From a didactic point of view, this is a little bit tricky, because I
presume some knowledge in visual representations or structures to explain
my examples. I decided to discuss interaction at first and the visual struc-
tures for different data types after this. One advantage is the possibility to
refer later to discussed interaction techniques directly with less additional
explanations. My experiences with students show that they accept this order,
and that they have no problem in understanding the differences/correlations.
But this should be communicated previously.
As described before, a discussion of the most important visual structures for
more basic data types follows the interaction component. Here, I introduce
visualization techniques for multivariate data, hierarchies and graphs mostly
on the basis of research papers as well as the topics of Spence and Kerren et
al. Individual solutions for special kind of data types, e.g., time-series data,
text, or software, follow this component directly. The second part finishes
with visualization techniques for different data domains, such as BioVis,
WebVis, GeoVis, etc. During the past years, I vary this part of the lecture a
little bit depending on my current research interests or hot-topics. Resources
for these lectures are current papers and articles, but also the second part
of the textbook [35].
Each course component of this second part is accompanied by short video or
tool demonstrations. From my perspective, this is absolutely needed, espe-
cially for the different interaction techniques and their interplay with visual
structures. It is fun to keep an eye on the students during such demon-
strations, and as a result they are motivated to ask deeper questions. One
interesting and traditional example is the claim to preserve the mental map
in dynamic graph drawing. Only with the help of a video or demo it is pos-
sible to illustrate the difference between morphing or other techniques, such
as foresighted layout [14]. However, the usage of video or tools is not always
possible because of unavailability.
3. My course concludes with 1-2 lectures on possible evaluation techniques and
the most important InfoVis challenges for the next years. Because of the miss-
ing time at the end of the semester, I focus on specific aspects of these issues.
For example, the intended learning aim is to impart students an overview
knowledge of basic evaluation techniques and—perhaps more important—an
impression of the diculties to perform such an evaluation. The final discus-
sion of the most important challenges gives an idea about the current state
of the field and leads to take part of it, for example, by working on a thesis
in my research group. A good source for these issues are the corresponding
chapters in Kerren et al. [35].