This presentation accompanies a conference paper. Here is the paper abstract that hopefully gives some context to the presentation: Modern research in geovisualisation has framed the discipline as a field more akin to “geovisual analytics” – one that places an emphasis on the human elements of exploration of data through interactive and dynamic geo-interfaces, rather than simple data representation. This rephrasing highlights the importance of cognitive aspects of human interaction with geo-based data and the interfaces designed to present them. In an attempt to provide a psychological background to the benefits of geovisual analytics, this paper will explore the role that perception has in complex problem solving and knowledge discovery, and will demonstrate that, through modern interactive technologies, (geo)visualisations augment and facilitate our natural ability to surface novel, surprising and otherwise invisible relationships between information. It will argue that it is through these novel relation-ships that we add to our understanding of the original information and simultaneously reveal new knowledge ‘between the gaps’. This talk was given on September 3rd, 2010 in Auckland, New Zealand

1. Knowledge in (geo)visualisation
The relationship between
seeing and thinking
Chris Marmo
PhD Candidate
School of Mathematical & Geospatial Sciences

2. Today...
1. Project overview
2. Geo-Visualisations as sense-making tools
3. The Web and Social Objects

3. Geo-knowledge project

4. Geo-knowledge project
Partnership with Parks Victoria
Design Research Institute's "Affective Atlas" group

5. Geo-knowledge project
How can Parks Victoria better
utilise the knowledge it and it's
staff have?

6. Geo-knowledge project
Tacit Knowledge:
Currently, valuable park specific knowledge, obtained
by rangers through years of experience, is inaccessible
to other rangers and vanishes completely when
rangers move on.

7. Geo-knowledge project
Tacit Knowledge:
Currently, valuable park specific knowledge, obtained
by rangers through years of experience, is inaccessible
to other rangers and vanishes completely when
rangers move on.
How can we retain and disseminate this knowledge?

8. Geo-knowledge project

9. Geo-knowledge project
Knowledge

10. Geo-knowledge project
Knowledge People

11. Geo-knowledge project
Knowledge People

12. Knowledge in (geo)visualisation

13. First: What is knowledge?

14. Subjectivity
'Knowledge' implies a 'knower', and
does not exist outside social contexts
and human interaction
Knorr Cetina (2000), Seely Brown & Duguid (2000) and Ackoff (1989)

15. Ackoff (1989)
Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom

16. Data Information

19. Geovisualisations = geovisual analytics

20. Geovisual analysis, through the employment of highly
interactive interfaces, focuses on the human elements of
interface interaction and data exploration
Fabrikant & Lobben, 2009

21. We are visual creatures

22. The relationship between seeing + thinking
Diagrams are easier to understand than sentential (list) representations
Perceptual Inferences are made much faster than tabular data
Larkin & Simon (1987) & Lohse (1993)

23. The relationship between seeing + thinking
Diagrams are easier to understand than sentential (list) representations
Perceptual Inferences are made much faster than tabular data
Larkin & Simon (1987) & Lohse (1993)
We learn about the world through internal spatial representations - mental models
Pictures and diagrams help us form better quality mental models
Johnson-Laird (1980) & Ware et al. (2008)

24. The relationship between seeing + thinking
Diagrams are easier to understand than sentential (list) representations
Perceptual Inferences are made much faster than tabular data
Larkin & Simon (1987) & Lohse (1993)
We learn about the world through internal spatial representations - mental models
Pictures and diagrams help us form better quality mental models
Johnson-Laird (1980) & Ware et al. (2008)
Visuo-spatial reasoning plays a large part in memory and recall
Interactive diagrams can help in the long-term recall of information
Baddeley & Hitch (1974) & Lowe & Bouchiex (2008)

25. What does this all mean?
We learn spatially, and our
perceptual abilities can be
exploited.

26. The Web & Social Objects

27. The Web and Social Objects
Social objects are the core of social interaction
Knorr-Cetina (2000)

28. The Web and Social Objects
Visualisations, through interaction and interface design,
become social objects.

29. The Web and Social Objects
...and enable a shared understanding to be reached.

30. The Social Life of Visualisation
An interface framework designed to encourage
the use of data visualisation as a storytelling
medium
MacDonald et al. (2009)

31. The Social Life of Visualisation
Create
Mapping Decoration
redrawn from MacDonald et al. (2009)

32. The Social Life of Visualisation
Create Interpret
Tweaking
Mapping Decoration
Annotation
redrawn from MacDonald et al. (2009)

33. The Social Life of Visualisation
Create Interpret Capture
Tweaking
Mapping Decoration Snapshot
Annotation
redrawn from MacDonald et al. (2009)

34. Examples
Gapminder.org
ManyEyes
OECD Explorer

35. Greater sense-making
Sharing +
Rich Data Interactivity communication

37. Summing up
We are visual thinkers
(Geo)visualisations can help us make sense of
things
...individually, and as social objects, in groups.

38. Project Plan: Next Steps
Qualitative study looking at knowledge + place
Diary Study - mobile app to record notes at locations
Visualisation tool - initially for us, but hopefully a start on a geo-
knowledge tool

39. Project Plan: Next Steps
Qualitative study looking at knowledge + place
Diary Study - mobile app to record notes at locations
Visualisation tool - initially for us, but hopefully a start on a geo-
knowledge tool
Ethics approval in there somewhere...

40. Thank you
Acknowledgements...
Bill Cartwright, Jeremy Yuille, Monique Elsley
ARC Linkage grant
chris.marmo@students.rmit.edu.au