Battle of the bulge: the usability of fisheye views

Associate Professor Carl Gutwin

Dept. Computer Science, University of Saskatchewan

Wed Jan 19 10:00:00 NZDT 2005 in Room 031 MSCS

Abstract

Although fisheye views and other distortion-oriented presentations have long been showpieces of information visualization, they have not found their way into common usage. A few minutes' experience with one of these systems suggests a reason why: although they are visually striking, they are also strikingly awkward to use. In this talk, I will review a research program that set out to determine whether fisheye views can be usable tools for exploring information and interacting with data, or whether they are a hopeless case, an infoviz trinket that should be returned to the mantelpiece whenever the real work starts.