Teaching:TUW - UE InfoVis WS 2005/06 - Gruppe G4 - Aufgabe 3 - Prototype

PROJECT: Interpret - Analyzer

Authors

Anna Muster 0026030 935 Jürgen Puchta 9335259 532 Christian Rainer 0026754 532 Christoph Sölder 0026629 532

Task description

The task was to design a visualization technique based on a known applicationarea. For a better demonstration we had to implement a prototype. But before we could start, we had to analyze the target group, think about interaction-possibilities and the datatypes as well as the datastructure. Since we have chosen the MP3 Archive Visualization, our job was the creation of a clearly arranged visualization for a big music archive consisting of several thousand files. We wanted to achieve a better information representation of the MP3s. Our visualization should help the user to get an overview of his collection and his listening-habits. The user will get information about the tracks, in reference to a special artist, which he often listens to and to those which he has never heard before. For example: in his database the user has got the band "Radiohead", who produced albums over 15 years and in this period they changed their music-style from alternative rock to experimental electronic. The visualization will show him from which producing period he has got more MP3s and which period he likes more, by counting the number of listenings of each song. The result could be that he has got more MP3s from their early years, but likes the experimental electronic tracks more. Our target was to design a representation of the data that is expressive, precise and self-explanatory.

Implementation description

When the user opens the "Interpret-Analyser" he will be prompted via a text-message in the main-window to click on an artist/band in the right upper window. The artists/bands are sorted alphabetically and the subject of interest can be found by scrolling the window vertically. If the user chose an artist/band in the upper right window, the main window will visualize him following details on the demanded item:

   *The x-axis shows the songs listed vertically by-publication-year generated out of the ID3-Data
   *The y-axis shows the number of songs published per year according to the specific number in the users' iTunes-library

The respective maximum on the y-axis will give a first overview on how many songs the specific library contains per artist/band per year. For each song (= one data point) one horizontal bar is drawn along the y-axis. That means for example if the library contains 34 songs by the band "Queen" with publication-year "1985", 34 bars are drawn at the x-axis value "1985" along the vertical y-axis. In addition to that each bar drawn vertically has a specific colour, representing the date when he was last played. As it is shown in our Mock-Up below the range goes from blue (representing songs that have not been played for a long time) to red (representing songs that have been played recently). Further on the user can interact and influence the characteristic of the visualization by using a slider positioned in the lower right in the graphic below. Via the slider a more objective image can be drawn according to the actual point of interest. This slider with a value-range from "0" to "10" represents the counts how often a song was played. It allows setting a threshold. The default value is "3" and means that songs that were played less than 3 times do not appear coloured, but as grey bars vertically above the coloured ones along the y-axis.

Screenshots

When the user opens the "Interpret-Analyser" he will be prompted via a text-message in the main-window to click on an artist/band in the right upper window. The artists/bands are sorted alphabetically and the subject of interest can be found by scrolling the window vertically. If the user chose an artist/band in the upper right window, the main window will visualize him following details on the demanded item:

   *The x-axis shows the songs listed vertically by-publication-year generated out of the ID3-Data
   *The y-axis shows the number of songs published per year according to the specific number in the users' iTunes-library

The respective maximum on the y-axis will give a first overview on how many songs the specific library contains per artist/band per year. For each song (= one data point) one horizontal bar is drawn along the y-axis. That means for example if the library contains 34 songs by the band "Queen" with publication-year "1985", 34 bars are drawn at the x-axis value "1985" along the vertical y-axis. In addition to that each bar drawn vertically has a specific colour, representing the date when he was last played. As it is shown in our Mock-Up below the range goes from blue (representing songs that have not been played for a long time) to red (representing songs that have been played recently). Further on the user can interact and influence the characteristic of the visualization by using a slider positioned in the lower right in the graphic below. Via the slider a more objective image can be drawn according to the actual point of interest. This slider with a value-range from "0" to "10" represents the counts how often a song was played. It allows setting a threshold. The default value is "3" and means that songs that were played less than 3 times do not appear coloured, but as grey bars vertically above the coloured ones along the y-axis.

Toolkits and/or Libraries

we did not use any libraries and toolkits

Links

Infoviswiki: Project: Group G4 Infovis: Our Presentation javadoc