Information Visualisation

Information visualization is the study of interactive visual representations of abstract data that exploits the capabilities of the human perceptual system. This abstract data could be numeric or non-numeric data, such as text, symbolic or geographic data. The main challenge in this area is to enable humans to intuitively explore a given data set to gain new insights, via the design of a cognitively useful visual and spatial mapping, with accompanying interaction techniques.

Information visualization is multidisciplinary, merging the areas of computer graphics, human-computer interaction, cognitive psychology, visual design and data science, and has become increasingly relevant in the age of big data and analytics in the understanding of large amounts of unstructured multivariate data, obtained from multiple sensors in IoT devices in real-time.

This module introduces the main principles and methods to design effective information visualizations, human perceptual and cognitive capabilities, and the different variety of information visualization techniques available. At the end of the course, students should be able to determine which methods are appropriate for visualizing certain data types, and to design and implement effective and compelling visualizations to explore and understand a data set.