This thesis explores 'problem sketching' as a means of dealing with socially constructed, complex human activity problems. It investigates how visualisation is used to facilitate the process of thinking about complex human problems. The most common and popular form of problem sketching appears to be 'rich pictures' as attributed to Checkland from the 1960s, as a part of Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). However, many users of rich picturing no longer consider it as only available to SSM users, rather it has become a stand-alone, if poorly defined, problem sketching method. Meanwhile, in the U.S., Churchman's (1950, 1968, 1971, 1975, 1979 and 1982) interpretation of systems thinking as multiple perspectival thinking has also been advocated by many writers as a useful approach to human activity problem solving. This approach does not seem to have an associated problem sketching method. This thesis therefore uses perspectival thinking as a frame to research problem sketching generally and rich pictures in particular. / First a review of the problem sketching, perspectival thinking and rich picturing literature was used to construct an 'issues table' to guide the interpretive empirical research. The first learning loop of this involved being a participatory observer in six managerial problem solving sessions where rich pictures were used. The second loop collected and analysed as many rich pictures as could be found (268) using the issues table derived from the literature. As the last learning loop, 32 semi-structured interviews were conducted with users who had a wide range of different industrial backgrounds and levels of experience with rich picturing. / The research found no universal design of rich picture, including any explicit application of perspectival thinking in the picturing process. The picture analysis and interviews suggested that systems concepts such as stakeholders, their concerns and their inter-relationships were commonly incorporated while other systems concepts such as boundary and purpose were rarely incorporated. In addition, it was found that the designers of rich pictures were aware of the importance of seeking multiple perspectives on the problem situation, but rarely was any explicit effort aimed at searching for new viewpoints/lens revealed. So while both the picture analysis and interviews indicated that most pictures did include the basic elements of what some writers have defined as a rich picture, only a few seemed to explicitly include any soft system thinking concepts in their pictures. / Whiteboards and paper in group settings was the most popular medium, as was free-hand sketching compared to computer generated icons. The majority of rich pictures included cartoon representations and the interviewees further emphasised the usefulness of humour in cartoon-like rich pictures. Furthermore, a strong focus was found on the process of sketching rather than the usefulness of the finished sketch. A number of interviewees indicated that drawing rich pictures was a group facilitation activity, which helped them to brainstorm ideas and capture thoughts through a discussion focused by the picturing. / Thesis (PhD)--University of South Australia, 2004.

The research reported here examined the use of computer generated graphics as a means to assist humans to analyse text documents which have not been subject to markup. The approach taken was to survey available visualization techniques in a broad selection of disciplines including applications to text documents, group those techniques using a taxonomy proposed in this research, then develop a selection of techniques that assist the text analysis objective. Development of the selected techniques from their fundamental basis, through their visualization, to their demonstration in application, comprises most of the body of this research. A scientific orientation employing measurements, combined with visual depiction and explanation of the technique with limited mathematics, is used as opposed to fully utilising any one of those resulting techniques for performing complete text document analysis. Visualization techniques which apply directly to the text and those which exploit measurements produced by associated techniques are considered. Both approaches employ visualization to assist the human viewer to discover patterns which are then used in the analysis of the document. In the measurement case, this requires consideration of data with dimensions greater than three, which imposes a visualization difficulty. Several techniques for overcoming this problem are proposed. Word frequencies, Zipf considerations, parallel coordinates, colour maps, Cusum plots, and fractal dimensions are some of the techniques considered. One direct application of visualization to text documents is to assist reading of that document by de-emphasising selected words by fading them on the display from which they are read. Three word selection techniques are proposed for the automatic selection of which words to use. An experiment is reported which used such word fading techniques. It indicated that some readers do have improved reading speed under such conditions, but others do not. The experimental design enabled the separation of that group which did decrease reading times from the remaining readers who did not. Measurement of comprehension errors made under different types of word fading were shown not to increase beyond that obtained under normal reading conditions. A visualization based on categorising the words in a text document is proposed which contrasts to visualization of measurements based on counts. The result is a visual impression of the word composition, and the evolution of that composition within that document. The text documents used to demonstrates these techniques include English novels and short stories, emails, and a series of eighteenth century newspaper articles known as the Federalist Papers. This range of documents was needed because all analysis techniques are not applicable to all types of documents. This research proposes that an interactive use of the techniques on hand in a non-prescribed order can yield useful results in a document analysis. An example of this is in author attribution, i.e. assigning authorship of documents via patterns characteristic of an individual’s writing style. Different visual techniques can be used to explore the patterns of writing in given text documents. Asoftware toolkit as a platform for implementing the proposed interactive analysis of text documents is described. How the techniques could be integrated into such a toolkit is outlined. A prototype of software to implement such a toolkit is included in this research. Issues relating to implementation of each technique used are also outlined. ii

Thesis (M.S.)--Auburn University, 2007. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographic references (ℓ. 81-84)

Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, March, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords:data visualization, email, visualization, history flow. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 60-61).

Thesis (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: N-dimensional; data; visualization; dimensional stacking; recursive. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 48-51).

Thesis (M.S.)--Worcester Polytechnic Institute. / Keywords: Computer science; abstraction quality; quality visualization. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 47-50).

Thesis (PhD) - Swinburne University of Technology, School of Information Technology, 2004. / A dissertation submitted to the School of Information Technology, Swinburne University of Technology for the award of Doctor of Philosophy - 2004. Typescript. Bibliography: p. [180]-192.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Ohio State University, 2008. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 93-96).

Thesis (M.S.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (p. 40-41).