Graphics-intensive methods for data visualization

There continues to be an explosive growth of data emanating from all areas of human endeavor, the analysis and understanding of which has become paramount in industry, government and academia. But many of the more advanced approaches to computer graphics and visualization often remain apart and in the domain of the specialist since they often require an uncommon set of skills, both artistic and technical, to design effective and engaging visual communication. The visual designer must possess a natural aptitude for artistic aspects such as composition, colour, and visual flow, and also engage in esoteric technical tasks such as data transformations and often programming.

The proposed research will develop visual data representations intended to offer visually engaging, physical metaphors that are understandable without onerous levels of training and that are suggestive of underlying uncertainties in datasets. The proposed methods will delve into technical, photo-realistic and stylistic elements, and these methods will be evaluated in the context of datasets with a significant degree of uncertainty deemed to be of public interest.

Visualizing data in ways that are simultaneously engaging and informative to a broad set of users is challenging and is the subject of this proposed work, specifically with regards to the development of novel graphics-intensive approaches. This theme will be manifested in several closely related initiatives that will develop and evaluate new graphics-intensive methods with distinctive incarnations and combinations of surfaces, color, spatial arrangement and lighting styles for data visualization. These initiatives feed directly into a long term research trajectory which aims to fuse advanced and specialized graphics methods and visualization, while also considering perceptual and aesthetic elements.