Visual Data Navigators (“Collaboratories”): True Interactive Visualisation for the Web

Abstract

The contents in Web documents are normally restricted to static items such as text, imagery and animations. “SmartDoc” has developed “Collaboratories” (Web application components) that incorporate not only text but also the entire interactive data visualisation and navigation process into a Web document, allowing users and project teams to collaborate and share data, visualisation parameters, information and insight while distributed over the standard or mobile Internet, using intuitive visual navigation techniques. In other words, publishing a text document on the Web is only half the story. The other half is enabling others to interact with the published result and gain insight into context that is meaningful.

“SmartDoc” is a research project jointly funded by the EC Commission and focus on embedded Collaboratories that give the reader full access to any discovery and insight, data navigation tools and underlying data. Visual data navigation is provided through interactive 2D and 3D Web-based visualisation components with a small footprint. The “discovery” is described in one or several snapshots providing the history of the visualisation process. These snapshots are a copy of the component’s state at the time when the snapshot was taken and allow the user to further interact from the state when the visualisation was snapped. They can be included as an image for printing the document. The underlying data or spreadsheet is either embedded in the document or accessed through a hyperlink. “What are users looking for?” is the key question guiding a SmartDoc process.

The Collaboratories (Application Components) are based are multi-layer visualisation component architecture with a small footprint suitable for Web distribution and therefore scalable and customisable to any level of expertise. A “SmartViewer” client-side plug-in, responsible for interactivity and graphics rendering, has been developed and will be distributed as “freeware” to allow free distribution of a SmartDoc on the network. Integration and assessment of application component-sharing through Web documents and a network infrastructure based on component industry standards, providing real-time data interactivity, reducing the load on the network and with zero administration client deployment.

SmartDoc scales to accomodate massive amounts of data presented in a visual format, allows full real-time interaction with on-screen presentations, and gives users an unprecedented level of high-quality visual presentation. Our integration of visualisation and data analysis through an atomic component architecture combined with special data reduction components and fast scene tree rendering by the SmartViewer enables the visual data navigation of large data sets.