User Requirements for Visualization in e-Social Science

Organisers

Wes Sharrock & Joanna Leng, University of Manchester, UK

Colin C. Venters & Tobias M. Schiebeck, National Centre for e-Social Science, UK

Summary

Visualization has been identified as a key enabling technology in realizing the research vision of e-Social Science. Computational visualization has been applied to many application areas and has been defined both by users and developers of the technology. One useful definition comes from Spence (2001) “Visualization is the process of transforming information into a visual form in order to allow the viewer to understand the relationships and findings that are not readily evident from the raw data or to gain greater insight into data the has been visualized at a primitive level”.

The aim of this half-day workshop is to enable an exchange of information between those who are familiar with, experienced in or advocating the use of visualization technologies with potential users who have only limited familiarity or understanding of how visualization can be applied in their research. The workshop will provide the opportunity for those who are unfamiliar with the techniques and technologies to engage with practioners and advocates to understand how visualization can be utilised in the field of social science.

The workshop is a modest exercise in requirements capture, giving the opportunity for those who see significant potential in the use of visualization in the social sciences to set out what they think the present value and imminent potential of the technology is, and to give their assessment of its state-of-the-art. Actual and potential users have the opportunity to discuss the extent to which their expectations of visualization match those initially set out, to evaluate their initial experiences with visualization techniques, to comment on the extent to which visualization techniques match their needs or to identify reasons why they have not adopted such techniques. The workshop enables an initial exploration of two large questions:

• Is visualization a wasted opportunity, or only a technology in search of an application?
• Are visualization techniques potentially very useful, but, as yet, poorly adopted to user needs?

The format of the workshop will include a series of short positional statements from invited speakers drawn from a cross-section of the disciplines including anthropology, economics, geography, informatics, and computer science. Three speakers have agreed to participate, Prof. Rob Procter (Research Director, ESRC National Centre for e-Social Science, UK), Dr Simon Peters (University of Manchester, UK) and Prof. Mike Batty (University College London, UK).

Spence, R. (2001). Information Visualization. Addison Wesley, p. xiii