ABSTRACT

The highest-level actions are to use vis to consume or produce information. The cases for consuming are to present, to discover, and to enjoy; discovery may involve generating or verifying a hypothesis. The high-level choices describe how the vis is being used to analyze, either to consume existing data or to also produce additional data. The mid-level choices cover what kind of search is involved, in terms of whether the target and location are known or not. At the highest level, the framework distinguishes between two possible goals of people who want to analyze data using a vis tool: users might want only to consume existing information or also to actively produce new information. A crucial aspect of presentation is that the knowledge communicated is already known to the presenter in advance. Sometimes the presenter knows it before using vis at all and uses the vis only for communication.