Interactive Storyboard for Overall Time-Varying Data Visualization

Abstract

Large amounts of time-varying datasets create great challenges for users to understand and explore them. This paper proposes an efficient visualization method for observing overall data contents and changes throughout an entire time-varying dataset. We develop an interactive storyboard approach by composing sample volume renderings and descriptive geometric primitives that are generated through data analysis processes. Our storyboard system integrates automatic visualization generation methods and interactive adjustment procedures to provide new tools for visualizing and exploring time-varying datasets. We also provide a flexible framework to quantify data differences and automatically select representative datasets through exploring scientific data distribution features. Since this approach reduces the visualized data amount into a more understandable size and format for users, it can be used to effectively visualize, represent, and explore a large time-varying dataset. Initial user study results show that our approach shortens the exploration time and reduces the number of datasets that users visualized individually. This visualization method is especially useful for situations that require close observance or are not capable of interactive rendering, such as documentation and demonstration.