Final Essay

The purpose of this essay is to give you an opportunity to think deeper about the issues that we discussed in class, and to demonstrate that you understood important concepts of visualization. You can chose between two topics:

1. What insights did I gain about information visualization that are not discussed in the texts that we read?
   
   During this course, I hinted at questions like
   - Does Inselberg need the lines for his discoveries?
   - Can one do the Inselberg discoveries much faster in InfoZoom or Eureka?
   - What kinds of things can one actually discover in VisDB?
   
   Any topic in the spirit of the abovementioned is fine.
   
   
2. How can one improve an existing visualization tool?
   
   This topic presumes that you experimented with an existing system and tried its functionality with at least two different data sets. So unless you find another functional system on the web that we discussed in class (ask me if you want to discuss a system that we did not discuss in class), you are restricted to one of the following systems:
   
   

   Eureka: http://www.inxight.com/products_eu/eureka/eureka_try.html

   The trial version expires after a month.Also available in the HCI Lab.

   
   InfoZoom: http://www.humanit.com/en/products/infozoom/download.html

   The trial version expires after a month.Also available in the HCI Lab.

   
   Spotfire: Available in the HCI lab
   
   VisDB: http://www.dbs.informatik.uni-muenchen.de/dbs/projekt/visdb/visdb.html
         For HP-UNIX and Linux only. This was not tested by me.

Your report should be about 10-12 pages in lenght, including 2-3 pages with pictures / screen shots. It should not review existing systems extensively, but rather concentrate on your original ideas.