AVID (Automatic Visualization Interface Designer)
AVID is an automatic system for generating interactive visualization designs. Often times when I want to visualize a set of data, I do not want to spend the time to manually craft the entire visualization. In addition, I am sometimes at a loss as to how to effectively display the data. Automatic systems like AVID use well established design rules to make visualization suggestions to users like you and me. A system such as AVID presents us with a wide variety of design choices, and we can pick and modify the ones we like best. In this way, we save time because we do not need to manually craft every aspect of the visualization, and we may also get new visualization ideas from the variety of choices available.
The design and implementation of AVID (which is part of my doctoral work) focusses on integrating interactive capabilities into automatic visualization design. This means that we will be able to automatically generate more active visualizations that not only show users static information but that are also able to dynamically adapt and change based on user input. As our visualization design capabilities expand, we are able to generate more powerful visual aids to support our tasks. At the same time, however, the design task increases in complexity, thereby making automatic help an even more crucial component.
If you are interested in work on automatic visualization design, check out the following seminal publications:
 | Bertin, .J. Semiology of Graphics, The University of Wisconsin Press 1983. |
| Casner, S. M. A Task-Analytic Approach to the Automated Design of Information Graphic Presentations. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 10, 2 (Apr. 1991), 111-151. |
| Mackinlay, J. D. Automating the Design of Graphical Presentations of Relational Information. ACM Transactions on Graphics, 5, 2 (Apr. 1986), 110-141. |
Also check out the SAGE project page.
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