Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

The Utility Of Beautiful Visualizations, Laura Tateosian, Reza Amindarbari, Christopher Healey, Pavel Kosik, James Enns

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings

Geovisualizations provide a means to inspect large complex multivariate datasets for information that would not otherwise be available with a tabular view or summary statistics alone. Aesthetically appealing visualizations can elicit prolonged exploration and encourage discovery. Creating data geovisualizations that are effective and beautiful is an important yet difficult challenge. Here we present a tool for rendering geovisualizations of continuous spatial data using the painterly techniques of impressionist-era artists. The techniques, which have been tested in controlled studies, vary the visual properties (e.g., hue, size, and tilt) of brush strokes to represent multiple data attributes simultaneously in each location. To …