Abstract
Digital visualisation is a way of representing data and information with the aid of digital means, engages human interpretation on information in order to gain insights in a particular context. Digital visualisation is always purposeful that will illustrate relationships; discover patterns and interdependencies; or generate some hypothesis or theory. However, it is still bound to the semantic (interpretation of visual displays and the meaning in the context) and pragmatic (effect and intention to be achieved) issues. These two issues can be addressed by semiotics, a formal doctrine of signs introduced by Peirce back in the 1930s; where digital visualisation is seen as a process of abduction. Abduction is a key process of scientific inquiry, which involves norms. Norms are patterns, regulations, rules and laws which are the reflection of knowledge in a cultural group or an organisation; which has an effect on the human interpretation on information. This paper pioneers a new perspective of digital visualisation by positioning digital visualisation as a process of abduction and proposes the key principles in digital visualisation.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Chen, C.-H., Hrdle, W., Unwin, A.: Handbook of data visualization. Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg (2008)
Czernicki, B.: Introduction to data visualizations. In: Czernicki, B. (ed.) Next-Generation Business Intelligence Software with Silverlight 3, pp. 127–164. A press, New York (2010)
Robert, S.: Information Visualization - Design for Interaction. Pearson Educated Limited, Essex (2007)
Ware, C.: Information visualization: perception for design. Elsevier, Somerville (2013)
SAS.: SAS Visual Analytics, 28 Feb 2014. http://www.sas.com/en_us/software/business-intelligence/visual-analytics.html
Azzam, T., et al.: Data Visualization and Evaluation. New Dir. Eval. 2013(139), 7–32 (2013)
Tufte, E.R.: Beautiful evidence, vol. 1. Graphics Press, Cheshire (2006)
Chen, M., et al.: Data, information, and knowledge in visualization. IEEE Comput. Graph. Appl. 29(1), 12–19 (2009)
Liu, S., Cui, W., Wu, Y., Liu, M.: A survey on information visualization: recent advances and challenges. Vis. Comput. 1–21 (2014)
Baars, H., Kemper, H.-G.: Management support with structured and unstructured data—an integrated business intelligence framework. Inf. Syst. Manage. 25(2), 132–148 (2008)
Zikopoulos, P., et al.: Harness the Power of Big Data the IBM Big Data Platform. McGraw Hill Professional, New York (2012)
Singhal, A.: An Overview of Data Warehouse, OLAP and Data Mining Technology, In: Data Warehousing and Data Mining Techniques for Cyber Security, pp. 1–23. Springer, New york(2007)
Davenport, T., Merino, M.: State of the Art Practice with Visual Analytics. Harvard Business Review, New York (2013)
Alexandre, D.S., Tavares, J.M.R.: Introduction of human perception in visualization. Int. J. Imaging Robot. 4(10), 45–69 (2010)
Thomas, J.J., Cook, K.A. (eds.): Illuminating the path: The research and development agenda for visual analytics. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos (2005)
Peirce, C.S.: Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce: Pragmaticisms and Pragnoaticism, Scientific Metaphysics, vol. 5-6. Belknap Press, Cambridge (1935)
Stamper, R.: Organisational semiotics: Informatics without the computer. In: Liu, K., et al. (eds.) Information, Organisation and Technology: Studies in Organisational Semiotics, pp. 115–171. Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston (2001)
Stamper, R., et al.: Understanding the roles of signs and norms in organizations-a semiotic approach to information systems design. Behav. Inf. Technol. 19(1), 15–27 (2000)
Liu, K.: Semiotics in information systems engineering. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2000)
Stamper, R.: Information systems as a social science. In: Bouissac, P. (ed.) Information System Concepts: An Integrated Discipline Emerging. IFIP — The International Federation for Information Processing, pp. 1–51. Springer, New York (2000)
Moriarty, S.E.: Abduction: a theory of visual interpretation. Commun. Theory 6(2), 167–187 (1996)
Wirth, U.: What is abductive inference? In: Bouissac, P. (ed.) Encyclopedia of Semiotics, pp. 1–3. Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York (1998)
Yu, C.H.: Abduction? deduction? induction? is there a logic of exploratory data analysis?. In: Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, ERIC Clearinghouse, New Orleans, LA (1994)
Kovács, G., Spens, K.M.: Abductive reasoning in logistics research. Int. J. Phys. Distrib. Logistics Manage. 35(2), 132–144 (2005)
Thagard, P.: Abductive inference: from philosophical analysis to neural mechanisms. In: Feeney, A., Heit, E. (eds.) Inductive Reasoning: Experimental, developmental, and Computational Approaches, pp. 226–247. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (2007)
Gregory, R. Muntermann, J.: Theorizing in design science research: inductive versus deductive approaches. In: Thirty Second International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS 2011), Shanghai (2011)
Popper, K.R.: Conjectures and Refutations, vol. 192. Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (1963)
de Souza, C.S.: Semiotic engineering: bringing designers and users together at interaction time. Interact. Comput. 17(3), 317–341 (2005)
Few, S.: Data visualization for human perception. In: Soegaard, M., Dam, R.F. (eds.) The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd edn, pp. 93–104. The Interaction Design Foundation, Aarhus (2013)
Gibson, J.J.: The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc, Hillsdale (1968)
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr Huiying Gao, visiting scholar to the Informatics Research Centre of Henley Business School, University of Reading, from School of Management and Economics of Beijing Institute of Technology, for her valuable and insightful comments to this paper.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this paper
Cite this paper
Liu, K., Tan, C. (2015). Semiotics in Digital Visualisation. In: Cordeiro, J., Hammoudi, S., Maciaszek, L., Camp, O., Filipe, J. (eds) Enterprise Information Systems. ICEIS 2014. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 227. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22348-3_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22348-3_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-22347-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-22348-3
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)