The report from the AHRC ICT Methods Network Intersections event is now available. This report also includes a mapping of overlaps between different presenters' topics and terminologies.

Photos: Mike Priddy

| Read the report online. | Download report in pdf form. 6Mb |

This workshop provided an invaluable opportunity for networking and for first hand insight into visualisation across domains. The vision of the AHRC ICT Methods Network in recognising and supporting a non-traditional format for this event has enabled its scope to be inclusive of diverse disciplinary discourses, while simultaneously trying to mitigate the barriers of discipline specific terminology. As a result, both personal and professional interaction between participants who may not have understood each others' perspectives through terminology alone has been enabled.

In order to make the analysis of the event more accessible to those who did not attend, the report begins by outlining the concept of a cross-domain diagramming event, and by visualising the overall experience from a presenter's perspective. Instructions for diagramming, with their dual focus on global and local visual information, are discussed.

There were sixteen presentations and fourteen submitted papers. Thumbnails from each presenter's slide(s) are embedded in the report. Presenters' responses are discussed in terms of visual structure of their slide, and by providing an excerpt of the conclusions from their paper. Where conclusions are not given, or where they are specific to a lengthy prior discussion not related to the slide, a related extract that can stand alone or that refers to the slide is chosen. Cross-domain terms within this extract are bolded.

Key points from the plenary discussion following the diagramming sessions, and the notes and diagrams from the groups sessions are summarised within the report. A discussion of the participants' evaluation on the day is also included.

A significant post-processing of the event was performed. The papers and audio transcripts in combination with the presenters' slides enabled the pairing of language used to the examples shown. In particular a working index of ~5500 terms was used in combination with the visual material presented to create a conceptual space of visualisation specific to these presenters. Notably, this conceptual space includes both their intersections and their differences.

A cross-domain (linear) path of presenters' slides in which overlapping ideas or topics link each slide to the next was constructed from the slides of the fourteen presenters who submitted papers. This path is designed to communicate the span of the cross-domain visualisation topics and issues to readers who did not attend the event. The linearity of the path will, by definition, obstruct some related intersections, however it provided a well-structured starting point.

Using this path, terminology was tracked across domains by taking the conclusions of one presenter's paper and looking for overlaps of their terminology with both the adjacent slides and across the path as a whole. In particular use of the terms interpretation, user/interaction was examined in some detail, raising questions of how to identify when a shared understanding of a generalised concept could be assumed, and when very specific and very different formalisations would need to be clarified on a case by case basis within cross-domain discussions.

By removing the individuals' slides from the path diagram, a new path composed of intersections in sequential presenters' slides, rather than the slides themselves, was obtained. This enabled a generalisation to broader groupings to be performed. This process captured areas of visualisation that were represented at the event or referred to in the presenters' papers.

In the resulting intersections diagram, eight broader areas were identified:
• User generated (visualisations)
• Visualisation ⇒ shifting disciplinary boundaries
• (Real-time) game environments
• Web-based environments
• Realism
• Visual communication and depiction
• Grid-based datasets – grid visualisation – collaboration
• Abstract data mapping

The emerging intersections in these groupings, and the areas where debates are centred on redefinition and differences are then discussed briefly, with a view to structuring these views and perspectives into future events, in particular vizNET 2008.

Julie Tolmie
London 2008

| Read the report online. | Download report in pdf form. 6Mb |

For further information, or to announce your cross-domain events to these pages,
please contact Dr Julie Tolmie (julie.tolmie@kcl.ac.uk).