CS 7450, Information Visualization, Fall '99

CS 7450
Information Visualization

Fall 1999, TuTh 1:30-3:00
College of Computing 102

Instructor: John Stasko, stasko@cc.gatech.edu; 253 College of Computing, 894-5617; Office Hours: Mon 2-3, Thu 1-1:30, or by appt.
Teaching Assistant: Quan Tran, quantt@cc.gatech.edu; 153 College of Computing; Office Hours: Thu 3-4 or by appt.

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General Information

Information visualization is a new research area that focuses on the use of visualization techniques to help people understand and analyze data. While fields such as scientific visualization involve the presention of data that has some physical or geometric correspondence, information visualization focuses on abstract data without such correspondences such as symbolic, tabular, networked, hierarchical, or textual information sources.

The objectives of the course are

Learn the principles involved in information visualization
Learn about the variety of existing techniques and systems in information visualization
Develop skills in critiquing different visualization techniques as applied to particular tasks
Learn how to evaluate visualization systems
Gain a bckground that will aid the design of new, innovative visualizations

The course will follow a graduate seminar style with much discussion of assigned readings, as well as viewing of videos and hands-on experience with research and commercial visualization tools.

Text: Our primary text will be Readings in Information Visualization, Using Visualization to Think by Stuart Card, Jock Mackinlay and Ben Shneiderman, Morgan Kaufmann, 1999. This book is a collection of some of the most important articles about Information Visualization, along with other new material about the field. Readings from the textbook will be supplemented by selected other articles that will be distributed in class.

Assignments will include student presentations of a particular course topic, use and analysis of some information visualization tools, creation of a visualization from a new data set, and a final project.

Students from a variety of disciplines are invited to take the course, but some prior background in human-computer interaction will be helpful. Programming experience is not required but will be useful. Project ideas not involving serious programming will be available.