By Erik Goelz and Cameron Mehin
Over the last few months, VMI has conducted extensive research and interviews with over thirty key opinion leaders and influencers across a variety of emerging visualization industries, ranging from technologists, academics, researchers and solution developers. These thought leaders became part of VMI’s “Topical Community” and provided us with cross industry-level insights and perspectives. We thank them for their contributions to the body of knowledge and to this Top Trends briefing.
Visualization is a process of discovery, leveraging human cognition and pattern recognition. While traditional analytical tools such as spreadsheets and statistical models focus on answering simple “Yes” or “No” questions, visualization promotes understanding and the leveraging of intuition. It essentially enables the understanding of the “Who, What, When, Where and Why” behind increasingly complex problems facing today’s analysts. However, there are emerging visualization pitfalls which include attention overload, visual fatigue and “paralysis by analysis.” Therefore, the critical question to ask regarding improvements in visualization is, “How can the analyst take advantage of the benefits of visualization’s discovery process while becoming more effective and more efficient for longer periods of time?”
Check out our white paper – VMI’s 2012 Top Visualization Optimization Trends.
VMI identified some of the top trends towards solving these issues. Additionally, in the near future, VMI will be conducting additional, targeted deep-dive research on specific areas detailed in the report.
In the meantime, we want to hear from you – What do you think are the top unmet needs and trends facing developers of next generation visualization solutions?
