ISR research accomplishments

Information Visualization: Starfield Display

Research team

Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant, Chris Ahlberg

Accomplishment

Compact graphical displays of multidimensional data using a zoomable scattergram with color and size coding for 50 to 500,000 markers. Dynamic queries are slider and check box controlled specifications which result in immediate changes to the display - no RUN button is needed.

Users have unprecedented control and opportunity to explore multidimensional data.

This research began in 1991, resulted in the widely cited HomeFinder and FilmFinder prototypes, which laid the basis for the commercial product Spotfire.

Spotfire has become the preferred tool for pharmaceutical drug discovery and a growing set of applications in decision analytics for chemical, manufacturing, and bio-informatics.

For more information

Ahlberg, C. and Shneiderman, B., Visual Information Seeking: Tight coupling of dynamic query filters with starfield displays, Proc. of ACM CHI94 Conference (April 1994), 313-317 + color plates. ISR TR 93-71

The Human Computer Interaction Lab has more information on Dynamic queries, starfield displays, and the path to Spotfire

You can also visit the Spotfire web site.