Value bars

INTRODUCTION The need for better information visualization and navigation tools is widely recognized [1], [5]. It is difficult to sort and continuously resort tables or listings by more than one attribute and still maintain an understanding of the origin and natural position of items. The concept of “value bars” was created to help users visualize and navigate large information spaces that have characteristics of a lineoriented listing with multiple, quantifiable attributes. In general, value bars are useful for analyzing multi-attxibute listings and tables where a particular sort order should be maintained and analysis of the top percentage of items within each attribute is beneficial, The main features are: “ the ability to see in one view an attribute distribution overview for the “important” items (as defined by attribute values) in a fisheye view [3] variant, ● very small screenspace footprint, ● the ability to see at once many attribute overviews, ● the ability to locate outliers and exceptions, and ● extremely low cognitive load navigation. This work was spawned from the study of a novel way to visualize large tree data structures, called Tree-maps [4]. A more detailed description, discussion, future value bars research, and results of a usability study can be found in [2].