Touchscreen and tablet data visualization

Touchscreen and tablet data visualization

As of late 2012, according to comScore, the U.S. In the first three months of 2013, Apple sold 19.5 million iPads, out of the 52.4 million tablet users in the United States. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that a few businesses are beginning to provide touch-aware data visualization tools, including Tableau, Roambi, and Bloomberg Mobile. However, using all those touches and motions isn't really maximized when your desktop UI is shown on a tablet, is it? Think about the Bloomberg iPad app. Generally speaking, it's a

Inventive interface for perusing and displaying stock data; yet, some tasks, like modifying and eliminating comparative measures in a graph, still need navigating menus with a finger that occasionally demands a little too much thickness. The software mostly loses the chance to reconsider the whole experience in the presence of features like the accelerometer, multi-touch, and gestures, with the exception of pinching to zoom in or out on graphs.

   How can we create more organic tablet-native interactions and metaphors for data visualization? This is an interesting topic. Fortunately, there is an increasing amount of research being conducted on how to visualize data on tablets and touch surfaces in a manner that both recognizes the difficulties and makes use of the special interaction features of these devices.

A Carnegie Mellon research is investigating how multi-touch interaction with physical models might facilitate the understanding of multivariate data. The prototype is shown on an iPad by researcher Jeff Rzesztorski in the video below. They invented instruments like lenses, attractors, and razors that let the user choose how points are arranged and filtered in a scatter plot. The Razor tool is very intriguing because, when you run it over the data (defining its endpoints with two fingers, then crossing them), it creates a scatter plot according to its filter criteria. makes some distinctions. To make sure that every point goes through the sieve, shake the iPad.

Additional interactions include even more physical manipulation: for example, sorting points according to "gravity" by tilting the display or "throwing" points by swiftly swiping the razor over the screen. These interactions look like they would bring the user "closer" or more involved with the data—interacting with it more directly—even if I haven't experienced the prototype myself. Visualization used for exploration has several advantages. View the demonstration in the video below. (An additional abstract that was just released provides considerably more information.)

An additional example is provided by Microsoft Research, where researchers Steven Drucker and associates developed FLUID, a tablet-based, gesture-enabled visualization interface, and contrasted it with a more conventional desktop WIMP interface that operated on a tablet. In order to communicate with our well-known acquaintance, the bar chart, he created the interface. The researchers wrote in their submission for CHI, "Our goal is to understand if, as well as the manner fluid touch-based gesture interaction provides subjective or efficiency improvements over current WIMP procedures for data exploration on tactile surfaces."

They started by creating a collection of semantic verbs, which are actions you wish to do with data, such selecting which categories to show, eliminating unnecessary information, or arranging and navigating. After that, they group-brainstormed these procedures into motions. For instance, in a bar chart, swiping in either way along the axis orders a group of bars, and flicking down on a bar filters it. Refer to Dominkus Bauer's TouchWave video for further design ideas on gestures in data visualization. When compared to the WIMP interface, FLUID proved to be quicker and more accurate for the tasks at hand, and the majority of users (13 out of 17) felt that it was simpler to use and understand.

The majority of users that participated in the survey said that the interface would be useful for displaying data since the audience would be able to understand the movements. One of the FLUID interface's drawbacks was that it was unable to use the widely accepted "recall over recall" UI design concept since not all choices were always accessible or displayed on the screen. Eventually, however, some functionality will still need to be included in the menu since not all functions can be encoded as distinct gestures and some degree of interface chrome will still be needed.

For tactile data visualizations, there are many unanswered design challenges to be solved, such as how to make motions more conventional and intuitive, as well as whether or not touch can be advantageous in data storytelling interfaces. Tips for integrating into UI design, etc. Something else. Deeper research questions are yet unanswered. A work on data visualization on interactive surfaces was released by French researcher Petra Isenberg of INRIA.That establishes a few crucial queries: "[We] do not fully understand how much impact touching virtual data has on an individual's capacity to understand or remember information," she states. Thus, there is a lot of work to be done here whether you are a scholar or a businessman.

The number of tablets in use will not only keep increasing, but there will also be more possibilities to explore data visualizations that fully use the interactivity offered by these new displays and devices via options such as museum exhibits, kiosks, and big format presentation systems. Utilize available bandwidth. Consultant Nick Diakopoulos is headquartered in New York City and specializes in the study, creation, and design of computational media applications. His areas of expertise include interface design, social media analytics, and data visualization.