Simultaneous Visual Data Analysis - Comprising time, space and multivariate data

Abstract: A lot of data is being gathered all the time. How can the data be explored to enable analysis of the data and reveal patterns and features? One way is to visualize the data. This project aimed to develop an application, which enables simultaneous analysis of time, space and multivariate data by the use of information and geographic visualization techniques. Interaction was built into the application to make exploration, filtering, picking, etc possible. The implemented application was named Time. The chosen work method was the sense-making loop, a well known phenomenon in visual analytics, the area in which information and geographic visualization is a part of. Since the project also had a research character it was of interest to learn about related work. To evaluate the application some data sets were gathered from among others SCB, Statistiska centralbyrån, Statistics Sweden and loaded into the application. The evaluation consisted of a usability study performed by expert reviewers and a case study performed by the creator of the tool. The evaluation revealed that it is a powerful tool for medium large data sets. Medium large in the sense of number of years and attributes present in the application. The usability study and the case study also resulted in suggestions of improvements to be carried out, which were also performed.