Interactive Visualization: Insight through Inquiry (Hardcover)

Interactive visualization is emerging as a vibrant new form of communication, providing compelling presentations that allow viewers to interact directly with information in order to construct their own understandings of it. Building on a long tradition of print-based information visualization, interactive visualization utilizes the technological capabilities of computers, the Internet, and computer graphics to marshal multifaceted information in the service of making a point visually. This book offers an introduction to the field, presenting a framework for exploring historical, theoretical, and practical issues. It is not a "how-to" book tied to specific and soon-to-be-outdated software tools, but a guide to the concepts that are central to building interactive visualization projects whatever their ultimate form. The framework the book presents (known as the ASSERT model, developed by the author), allows the reader to explore the process of interactive visualization in terms of choosing good questions to ask; finding appropriate data for answering them; structuring that information; exploring and analyzing the data; representing the data visually; and telling a story using the data. Interactive visualization draws on many disciplines to inform the final representation, and the book reflects this, covering basic principles of inquiry, data structuring, information design, statistics, cognitive theory, usability, working with spreadsheets, the Internet, and storytelling.

互動視覺化正逐漸成為一種充滿活力的新型溝通形式，提供引人入勝的演示，讓觀眾能夠直接與資訊互動，以構建自己對資訊的理解。互動視覺化建立在長期以來以印刷為基礎的資訊視覺化傳統之上，利用電腦、互聯網和電腦圖形的技術能力，以視覺方式呈現多面向的資訊，以達到視覺化的目的。本書介紹了這個領域，提供了一個探索歷史、理論和實踐問題的框架。它不是一本與特定且即將過時的軟體工具相關的「如何」書籍，而是一本指導讀者在不論最終形式如何的互動視覺化項目中，建立核心概念的指南。本書提出的框架（作者開發的 ASSERT 模型）允許讀者從選擇好問題、找到適當的資料來回答問題、結構化資訊、探索和分析資料、以視覺方式呈現資料，到使用資料講述故事，來探索互動視覺化的過程。互動視覺化借鑒了許多學科的知識來形成最終的呈現方式，本書也反映了這一點，涵蓋了探究的基本原則、資料結構化、資訊設計、統計學、認知理論、可用性、使用試算表、互聯網和故事講述等內容。