Visualization Design Patterns

Overview

For any design discipline, including Information and Scientific Visualization, there are design problems within the domain that tend to arise time and again. Although effective solutions may be known, they are not helpful unless that knowledge is coherently structured and communicated to colleagues. Without good structure, design knowledge may be disparate and disjointed, and relationships among solutions may not be apparent. Without good communication, designers who are unaware of solutions may be forced to ‘reinvent the wheel’, wasting unnecessary effort on a problem that has already been solved by others. Some means of capturing and codifying solutions to Information Visualisation design problems would be useful for those engaged in practice. The Visualization Design Patterns described here have been proposed for this purpose.

Foundational Patterns

These patterns are the building blocks of Visualizations. They are more "reference patterns" than true "design patterns". Visualization designers will assume they are a given component of visualization design. The patterns are included to provide a common technical lexicon, to build a lingua franca used throughout the language, to encourage communications between novices and experts, and to facilitate a discussion of pros and cons.

Visualization Architecture

• Visualization

Interaction Patterns

User intent-based categories of interaction techniques

• Reconfigure: show me a different arrangement
• Encode: show me a different representation
• Filter: show me something conditionally
  • Filter
  • Dynamic Queries
  • Context-maintained Filter
  • Reduction Filter
• Abstract/Elaborate: show me more or less detail
  • Overview
  • Details-on-demand
• Connect: show me related items
  • Brushing
• Explore: show me something else
  • Navigation
  • Navigation Box
  • Spatial Navigation
  • Click-n-Drag
  • Teleportation
• Select: mark something as interesting
  • Single Direct Selection
  • Multiple Direct Selection
  • Bounding Box
  • Single Direct Selection+Keyboard
  • Bounding Box+Keyboard
• Other
  • Direct Manipulation
  • Smooth Transitions
  • 2D Navigational Model
  • 3D Navigational Model
  • NAFS Model

See also: Interaction Design Patterns (wikipedia article) (roulette online)

Display Rendering Patterns

• Appropriate Visual Objects
• Level of Detail
• 2d Representation
• 3d Representation
• Reference Context
• Redundant Encoding
• Small Multiples
• Datatips
• Legends
• Visual Separation
• Familiar Organizational Device
• Non-Familiar Organizational Device

Programming Patterns

These are patterns related to the backend programming of visualization systems. They are organised according to the Model-View-Controller approach, though other organizational systems may also be appropriate.

Heer and Agrawala's paper Software Design Patterns for Information Visualization provides a useful overview of software design patterns specific to infovis tasks.

Data Modelling and Management

• Reference Model
• Data Column
• Cascaded Table
• Relational Graph
• Proxy Tuple
• Expression

View

• Camera
• Dynamic Query Binding

Controller

• Scheduler
• Operator
• Renderer
• Production Rule
• cell phone spying

Development Patterns

These patterns relate to the systems development lifecycle and to the activities involved in implementing and testing software.Thiet ke logo, Hoc ke toan, Dich vu SEO

Diagnosis

For techniques used during the design process to evaluate coding and design-time decisions.

Evaluation and Testing

Quality Assurance, Evaluation, and Usability testing methods to close the stun gun feedback loop during the development lifecycle.