About the group
The ISOVIS group mainly focuses on the explorative analysis and visualization of typically large information spaces, for example, in Software Engineering, Geography, or Biology. Another research topic is the use of visualizations in educational software, especially for computer science education. Hereby, we focus on so-called human-centered visualization techniques and approaches:Human-Centered Visualization combines traditional visualization techniques with the ability of the human visual-brain system and/or the haptic-motoric system to explore and analyze complex data sets comprehensively. This kind of visualization merges several aspects of different research areas, such as Information Visualization, Scientific Visualization, Human-Computer Interaction, Data Mining, Information Design, Graph Drawing, and Computer Graphics. From all subfields in visualization, we mainly focus on Information Visualization which centers on the visualization of abstract data, e.g., hierarchical, networked, or symbolic information sources, in order to help users understand and analyze such data.
For most practical applications, researchers try to find the best visual representation of the given information. That is the core problem of each visualization but sometimes the seemingly best representation does not suffice if the human information processing and the human capability of information reception are not adequately taken into account. Additionally, these aspects depend on the data to be visualized and on the user's background. While the development of human-centered visualization tools, user abilities and requirements, visualization tasks, tool functions, and visual representations should be equally taken into account. The design of such tools is one of the large challenges of Information Visualization, Software Visualization, and of many application areas, such as the visualization of biological/biochemical or geographical information.
The group is headed by Prof. Dr. Andreas Kerren.