Visual Apollo: A Graphical Exploration of Computer-Human Relationships

摘要

The example of the Apollo 11 lunar landing illustrates some of the benefits of our use of data visualization to study computer-human interactions. Our approach incorporates inclusive data sets, a graphical and accessible format, and a temporal and thus immersive experience of the data. Data visualization provides an opportunity to represent complex social and technical data in a format that is accessible to broad audiences. However, the format also presents new constraints. Data must graphically fit into a visualization. In the example provided, physiological, embedded, and historical data have not been fully integrated. Furthermore, although the format presents an opportunity to work outside the narrative structure of writing, some kind of sequential explanation would be useful-perhaps invaluable-for a general audience. With these opportunities and limitations in mind, we are continuing to refine our approach and are moving toward more general systems for visually representing data from computer-human interactions. We are now developing several classes of visualization in parallel, each of which is tuned to the expectations and ends of particular audiences.