Lists of Influences
List of Influences: Nigel Holmes
Few people have influenced the face of information graphics like Nigel Holmes. I am honored to not only present his very extensive and detailed list of influences here, but also do so on the occasion of his upcoming 70th birthday on June 15, 2012. Read more…
List of Influences: Ben Shneiderman
Ben Shneiderman’s name has been with me through my entire computing life. In high school, we used to draw Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams to understand structured programming. In the HCI course at my university, his name was on the papers and book chapters we read. When I got into information visualization, he was still everywhere, with treemaps, the visual information seeking mantra, and many other greatly influential pieces of work. What follows below is Ben’s list of influences, in his own words. Read more…
List of Influences: Jock Mackinlay
Jock D. Mackinlay was working on information visualization long before the field or the term even existed. His Ph.D. thesis on the automatic visual representation of data translated Bertin's semiological texts into a useful piece of software (and badly-needed visualization theory). His work also includes Cone Trees, the Perspective Wall, an analysis of the visualization design space, as well as the Readings in Information Visualization (together with Stuart Card and Ben Shneiderman). Mackinlay worked at PARC from 1986 to 2004, when he joined Tableau Software – a company based on a Ph.D. thesis inspired by his work 15 years earlier. Read more…
List of Influences: Colin Ware
Several lists of influences reference work by Colin Ware, mostly of course his book Information Visualization: Perception for Design. It therefore makes sense to ask an influencer of influencers about his influences. As it turns out, there are some vicious circles here, with the influenced influencing the influencers back. Read more…
List of Influences: Penny Rheingans
I was going to describe Penny Rheingans as the first purely scientific visualization person on this list, but that would have been a gross oversimplification. Penny has done groundbreaking work in volume illustration, perception, and uncertainty in visualization. One project of particular interest to me is an experimental evaluation of Chernoff Faces. Penny is also the only person I ever saw knitting at a conference – but after a look at her list of influences (in alphabetical order of the authors below), it all make sense. Read more…
List of Influences: Alan MacEachren
The first time I saw Alan MacEachren speak was as the keynote speaker at the Diagrams 2000 conference in Edinburgh. Because of his background in geography, he was introduced as "a practitioner" of diagrams – a designation which he immediately resisted. His work is clearly much more than that, connecting cartography, information visualization/design, semiotics, and perception. Alan's book How Maps Work has considerably changed the way representation and communication are understood when it comes to maps. Read more…
List of Influences: Jarke "Jack" van Wijk
A colleague of mine describes Jarke van Wijk as "somebody who has not just worked in several areas of visualization, but also written the landmark papers in each of them." His contributions include spot noise and image-based flow visualization, cushion treemaps (with Huub van de Wetering), optimal zooming and panning (with Wim A. A. Nuij), as well as reflections on the value of visualization. His sense of humor is also notable, and his talks are always very enjoyable. Reason enough, therefore, to consider him influential enough to ask him for a list of things that influenced him. Read more…
List of Influences: Chaomei Chen
The second list of influences is by Chaomei Chen. He is an associate professor at Drexel University and the editor-in-chief of the Information Visualization journal. He has also authored or co-authored six books, the most recent of which is Information Visualization: Beyond the Horizon. His research interests include the visualization of social networks in general and co-citation networks in scientific publications. Read more…
List of Influences: Pat Hanrahan
Since Pat Hanrahan was part of the reason for starting this project, it was only fair to ask him first. I also didn't get all the titles written down that he mentioned, so there is also a practical reason ... Read more…
Series: Lists of Influences
Ever wondered where the successful visualization researchers take their ideas from? How they got to know all that stuff that they draw from? What made them work on a certain project? Well wonder no more. EagerEyes.org brings you twelve lists of books, articles, and other things that influenced twelve researchers who influence us. Read more…