Research & Projects
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.
Information Visualization (InfoVis) is a relatively new research area that focuses on the use of
visualization techniques to help people understand and analyze data. While related fields such as
Scientific Visualization involve the presentation of data that has some physical or geometric
correspondence, Information Visualization centers on abstract information without such correspondences,
i.e., there is no possibility to map this information into the physical world in most cases. Examples
of such abstract data are symbolic, tabular, networked, hierarchical, or textual information sources.
The ever increasing amount of data generated or made available every day confirms the urgent need of
InfoVis tools. There are many possible visual representations but only a fraction are helpful for a
given task or application domain. As prerequisite for building a successful visualization, InfoVis
combines several aspects of different research areas, such as Scientific Visualization, Human-Computer
Interaction, Data Mining, Information Design, Cognitive Psychology, Visual Perception, Cartography,
Graph Drawing, and Computer Graphics. Also, aesthetic aspects play a more and more important role.
The InfoVis:WiKi Project gives a good general overview about the field and informs about the most important events.
Our research projects in Information Visualization!
Software Visualization (SoftVis) is a large subarea of Information Visualization that involves visualization
of different aspects of software, i.e., algorithms, programs, software structures and execution, software
evolution, etc., to help people better understand software. Software visualization tools can be used in
teaching in order to help students understand how algorithms work. Additionally, they can be used in the
software development process as a way to help programmers understand their code better as well as to support
software architects in structuring large and complex software systems.
The ACM Symposium on Software Visualization will provide a SoftVis portal in the near future and informs about the most important events.
Our research projects in Software Visualization!