Output details

Visual comparison for information visualization

<20>A goal in the community is to develop a reference model of visualization. One important task is the comparison of complex objects, a fundamental operation in information visualization. To date, there has been little discussion of the general issues common to comparison tasks. We introduce a new taxonomy of visual designs for comparison that is applicable across the complete information visualization domain. We exemplify the taxonomy with examples across the breadth of information visualization. This helps users understand the patterns common in the comparison of complex objects. We have been successfully using these ideas with oceanographic visualisation for flood management.