In recent years researchers has focused on the development of techniques for multi-sensor data fusion systems. Data fusion systems process data from multiple sensors to develop improved estimate of the position, velocity, attributes and identity of entities such as the targets or entities of interest. Visualizing sensor data from fused data to raw data from each sensor help analysts to interpret the data and assess sensor data fusion platform, an evolving situation or threats. Immersive visualization has emerged as an ideal solution for exploration of sensor data and provides opportunities for improvement in multi sensor data fusion. The thesis aims to investigate possibilities of applying information visualization to sensor data fusion platform in Volvo. A visualization prototype is also developed to enables multiple users to interactively visualize Sensor Data Fusion platform in real-time, mainly in order to demonstrates, evaluate and analyze the platform functionality. In this industrial study two research methodologies were used; a case study and an experiment for evaluating the results. First a case study was conducted in order to find the best visualization technique for visualizing sensor data fusion platform. Second an experiment was conducted to evaluate the usability of the prototype that has been developed and make sure the user requirement were met. The visualization tool enabled us to study the effectiveness and efficiency of the visualization techniques used. The results confirm that the visualization method used is effective, efficient for visualizing sensor data fusion platform.

Effect mapping is a method often used by companies in order to try to tie together the business goals with the users and their needs. The results of the effect mapping is often presented in long reports, with an additional effect map attached to it. Unfortunately, few clients tend to read these reports that they later are supposed to base future decisions on. This thesis aims to examine the efficiency in readers' perception of information, specifically the information from effect mapping. It evaluates if the understanding and perception, as well as the participation, could be improved by developing a digital web based version of the information. The objective of this study is to determine if a visualized web version of the effect mapping is more efficient than the original paper report version. The purpose is to help consulting firms improve the communication with their clients, that the clients will take part of and consume the information provided by the effect mappings that are delivered in a more efficient way. The process started out with workshops that were a foundation for a prototype. The prototype was developed based on the theoretical framework of this thesis, and created from a specific example of a traditional effect mapping report. The prototype was tested and evaluated before compared to, and evaluated with, the original paper report version of the effect mapping. The findings are that a web based, visualized presentation of the effect mapping is more efficient than the original paper report version. Not only did the participants of the study find the correct information in a shorter amount of time, but the user experience was also enhanced. The findings in this study are useful for firms that want to present results of effect mapping to customers who do not tend to spend time reading the full reports, but would rather get a quicker overview. This study can be used as a point of departure for future research, by testing it on other reports or firms.

This paper describes the design, implementation and evaluation of HyperSALmon, a Java™ open source prototype for visualizing service models in telecommunication networks. For efficient browsing and graphical monitoring of service models using SALmon, a service modeling language and a monitoring engine (Leijon et al., 2008), some kind of interactive GUI that implements a visualization of the service model is desired. This is what HyperSALmon is intended to do. The prototype has been designed in accordance with suggestions derived from a current research report of visualization techniques (Sehlstedt, 2008) appropriate for displaying service model data. In addition to these suggestions domain experts at Data Ductus Nord AB has expressed an urge for implementation of further features, some of their suggestions are deduced from research documents (Leijon et al., 2008; Wallin and Leijon, 2007, 2006), while others have been stated orally in direct relation to the prototype implementation work. The main visualization proposal is to use tree structures. Thus, both traditional tree structures and hyperbolic tree structures have been utilized, where the main navigation is set to occur in the hyperbolic tree view. In order to contribute further to this report I provide a discussion addressing problems related to the context of implementing a prototype for service model visualization using open source frameworks that meets the requirements set by the service model network architecture, the domain experts and the suggestions in the research report (Sehlstedt, 2008,page 51-52). Finally, I will present drawn conclusions of the attempted prototype implementation, illustrating potential strengths and weaknesses and consequently introduce suggestions for possible improvement and further development.

Graphs currently attract an increasing number of computer scientists due to their widely adoptions in different areas. However, when people perform graph drawing, one of the most critical issues they need to concern is atheistics, i.e., to make the graph more suitable for human perceptions. In this work, we will aim at exploring one specific kind of graph ''planar st-graphs'' with space-filling technique in Info Vis area. We would cover edge crossing elimination, layer assignment, graph drawing algorithms, and new development of space-filling technique in planar st-graphs drawing etc. The final aim of this project is to develop a new algorithm to draw planar st-graphs based on a space-filling visualization approach with minimum edge crossings and maximum space usage.

Målet med detta examensarbete är att ta fram ett gränsnitt för navigering i stora datamängder samt undersöka eventuella styrkor och svagheter hos detta gränsnitt. Bakgrunden till projektet är att företaget Analog Software utvecklar ett system som automatiskt skall klassificera objekt i en datamängd och sedan presentera denna klassificerade datamängd. Gränsnittet skall stödja en informationssökningsstrategi som benämns ”browsing”. En teknik för visualisering av information som varit framgångsrik är den så kallade ”Fisheye-tekniken” som baseras på en analogi med en vidvinkellins. Tekniken visar lokal information med hög detaljrikedom samtidigt som den visar global information med låg detaljrikedom. Ett flertal gränssnitt har använt sig av denna teknik för visualisering av information. I detta arbete har ett textbaserat Fisheye-gränssnitt tagits fram och testat med avseende på två olika funktioner. De två funktionerna är ”anomalier” och ”stöd för bokmärken”. Hypoteserna var: 1. Om anomalier fanns i datastrukturen så skulle en Fisheye-teknik förstärka dessa. 2. En bokmärkesfunktion skall ej behövas då Fisheye-tekniken erbjuder global kontext och byte av fokus går snabbt. Två experiment utfördes med 28 försökspersoner. I experiment 1 använde hälften av försökspersonerna ett standargränssnitt och hälften ett Fisheye-gränssnitt. De fick navigera i en datamängd sorterad på två olika sätt och ange om det upplevde sorteringen som naturlig eller konstig. I experimet 2 ingick samma försökspersoner som i experiment 1. I detta experiment fick hälften navigera med ett Fisheye-gränsnitt med bokmärkesfunktion och hälften med ett Fisheye-gränssnitt utan bokmärkesfunktion. De skulle navigera i en datamängd och svara på ett antal frågor. Resultaten visade att Hypotes 1 kunde förkastas. Försökspersonerna som använde sig av Fisheye-gränsittet upplevde datamängden att vara mer naturlig än den grupp som använt sig av ett standardgränssnitt. För hypotes 2 kunde inga säkra slutsatser dra på grund av att experimentet inte lyckades mäta det som avsågs att mätas.

Complex data are being stored daily in databases in an unstructured way. Visualizations techniques can be used to present complex data in a user friendly and understandable way. This thesis presents the implementation of a visualization interactive tool called Eco Donuts. It is part of a set of tools created to visualize complex food data called Ekopanelen. The feature Eco Donuts presents time-dependent food data which are ordered in categories. It gives the opportunity to users to explore their data over time by performing simple interactions. This thesis documents an exploratory study on how this visualization tool can be used to enhance the user experience and provide insights of complex data. The visualization feature was implemented and evaluated with ten participants. The participants were asked to evaluate the visualization tool by accomplishing nine different tasks. The sessions were recorded using a log system as well as video recording. This study shows that the proposed tool can be used to visualize complex information in a user friendly and presentable way.

The aim for this project was thus to present a web application to ease the time reporting process and to create an overview of company data. The overview is a concept represented with information visualization. A usability test was conducted in order to ascertain whether the aim was reached and to gain insight in how the application could be further improved in the future.

A new phenomenon on the Internet is the online audience response. Mentimeter is a web-based tool where you can create online polls. The users can then cast a vote and the result is shown in real time. We want to test the information visualization in Mentimeter and we base our hypothesis, that a better graph design is possible, on the work of Edward Tufte and Stephen Few. Edward Tufte is an emeritus at Yale University, where he held courses in statistical evidence and information design and has created theories about how visual information should be designed. Stephen Few is a known information designer and he has based a lot of his theories on the work of Tufte. We compare Tufte and Fews design principles against the Mentimeter tool with user testing. We can see that Tufte and Fews theories still stand strong when it comes to the comparisment with Mentimeter and that a redesign of their graphs could raise the quality and the user experience of the tool. But Mentimeter is also a tool that functions the way it is supposed to.

Zoonotic diseases are diseases that are transmitted from animals or vectors to humans and vice versa. The public together with veterinarian authorities should readily access disease information as it is vital in rapidly controlling resultant zoonotic outbreak threats through improved awareness. Currently, the reporting of disease information in South Africa is predominantly limited to traditional methods of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) like faxes, monthly newspaper reports, radios, phones and televisions. Although these are effective ways of communication, their disadvantage is that the information that most of them offer can only be accessed at specific times during a crisis. New technologies like the internet have become the most efficient way of distributing information in near-real-time. Many developed countries have used web-based reporting platforms to deliver timely information through temporal and geographic visualisation techniques. There has been an attempt in the use of web-based reporting in South Africa but most of these sites are characterised by heavy text which makes them time consuming to use or maintain. As a result most sites have not been updated or have ceased to exist because of the work load involved. The success of web reporting mechanisms in developed countries offers evidence that web-based reporting systems when appropriately visualised can improve the easy understanding of information and efficiency in the analysis of that data. In this thesis, a web-based reporting prototype was proposed after gathering information from different sources: literature related to disease reporting and the visualisation of infectious diseases; the exploration of the currently deployed web systems; and the investigation of user requirements from relevant parties. The proposed prototype system was then developed using Adobe Flash tools, Java and MySQL languages. A focus group then reviewed the developed system to ascertain that the relevant requirements had been incorporated and to obtain additional ideas about the system. This led to the proposal of a new prototype system that can be used by the authorities concerned as a plan to develop a fully functional disease reporting system for South Africa.

Web Usage Mining (WUM) can be used to determine whether the information architecture of a web site is structured correctly. Existing WUM tools however, do not indicate which web usage mining algorithms are used or provide effective graphical visualisations of the results obtained. WUM techniques can be used to determine typical navigation patterns of the users of organisational web sites. An organisational web site can be described as a site which has a high level of content. The Computer Science & Information Systems (CS&IS) web site at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University (NMMU) is an example of such a web site. The process of combining WUM and information visualisation techniques in order to discover useful information about web usage patterns is called visual web mining. The goal of this research is to discuss the development of a WUM model and a prototype, called WebPatterns, which allows the user to effectively visualise web usage patterns of an organisational web site. This will facilitate determining whether the information architecture of the CS&IS web site is structured correctly. The WUM algorithms used in WebPatterns are association rule mining and sequence analysis. The purpose of association rule mining is to discover relationships between different web pages within a web site. Sequence analysis is used to determine the longest time ordered paths that satisfy a user specified minimum frequency. A radial tree layout is used in WebPatterns to visualise the static structure of the organisational web site. The structure of the web site is laid out radially, with the home page in the middle and other pages positioned in circles at various levels around it. Colour and other visual cues are used to show the results of the WUM algorithms. User testing was used to determine the effectiveness and usefulness of WebPatterns for visualising web usage patterns. The results of the user testing clearly show that the participants were highly satisfied with the visual design and information provided by WebPatterns. All the participants also indicated that they would like to use WebPatterns in the future. Analysis of the web usage patterns presented by WebPatterns was used to determine that the information architecture of the CS&IS web site can be restructured to better facilitate information retrieval. Changes to the CS&IS web site web were suggested, included placing embedded hyperlinks on the home page to the frequently accessed sections of the web site.