The project topics are intended to be somewhat open-ended, giving you significant freedom to design the visualization and user interfaces. Although many of these topics are based on existing visualization techniques, it is not required (and perhaps not recommended) that your design be similar to the existing tools.
Scatter Plot
Maps multi-dimensional data attributes to visual attributes such as x, y,
size, color, etc. Similar approach as used by Spotfire. User should
have control over mappings. How can users map data attributes to the
visual attributes? Background reading: "Automating
the design of graphical presentations of relational information".
3D Scatter Plot
Same as Scatter Plot above, but displays a 3D scatterplot of
multi-dimensional data. How to effectively interact with the display?
How to map data attributes to x,y,z and other visual attributes? Some
source code is available:
Plot-3D.
Graphical Tables
Tabular display of multi-dimensional data that includes graphical
representation. Emphasis on tabular visual format with display of textual
data values, and integrated graphical representation of data. How can
table, text, and graphics be merged? Background reading: "Table
Lens", www.tablelens.com.
Parallel Coordinate Plot
Displays multi-dimensional data using parallel axes. What interaction
strategies are important? e.g. rearranging axes, coloring lines, etc.
Background reading: "Parallel
Coordinates", XmdvTool.
Scatter Plot Matrix
Display scatter plots for all possible pairs of data attributes in a
multi-dimensional data set. What interaction strategies are important?
Background reading: XmdvTool.
InfoZoom (a.k.a. FOCUS)
Multi-dimensional data visualization for categorical data. How can
several categorical attributes be effectively visualized? What interaction
strategies are key to enable drilling down in multiple categories.
Background reading: "FOCUS",
InfoZoom.
Histograms
Displays distributions of multi-dimensional data for a single attribute.
The range of the attribute is broken into small sub-ranges, and a bar-graph
shows the counts of the number of data items that lie in each sub-range.
These can be replicated in a panel to show several attributes of a
multi-dimensional data set, and interactively linked for brushing-and-linking
between them. How can users interact with multiple histograms to
incrementally adjust selections? Background reading: “Attribute
Explorer”.
Dynamic-Query panel
Enables users to rapidly and incrementally specify queries on
multi-dimensional data, and can be used as a DQ panel to filter or highlight
data in other visualizations. Uses double-box sliders or other widgets.
Should generate set-selection, add-to-selection, remove-from-selection events.
How can more complex queries be specified? How can results be shown within
the query? Background reading: "Dynamic
Queries", "Spotfire".
Tree View
Display tree structured data using a familiar explorer-like control, with
capabilities for showing additional attributes. Can be based on the JTree
component. How can additional data attributes be shown using graphical
representation? How can fish-eye techniques be used to enable scale up?
Background reading: WebTOC,
FishEye Menus.
Hyperbolic Tree
Display tree structured data using hyperbolic projection and fisheye
techniques for fast navigation. How can additional data attributes be
shown using graphical representation? Some source code is available:
HyperTree. Background
reading: “Hyperbolic
Trees”, StarTree.
Geographic Maps
Displays thematic maps that show demographics trends across geographic
regions by color coding regions according to a data attribute. Map
geography can be loaded from separate files such as .shp files. How can
users interact with the map? Source code library for geographic maps is
available: GeoTools.
Background reading:
Dynamaps.