The social community is structured around data, a lot of that data is stored in different types of databases. The meaning of this essay is to develop an interactive tool that will change the way database visualization is done, and also to research in which fields a tool of this type can be used. With the help of different methods we discovered areas where it could be of use, such as; presentation of a database, development and documentation of a database. The primary goal of the prototype was to make viewing of database structures easier, even people without prior database knowledge should be able to understand the structure. During the development we used prototypes.

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.

ProblemIdeation in group is used by many, often as a tool for creating new and innovative ways to solve problems and creating change. Groups may have difficulties to move from the phase of inspiration to the phase of ideation, if information and ideas aren?t defined in the team.The authors claim that this process can be helped by providing practical tools that are adapted and tested for the purpose. The reason is to foster concretization of volatile thoughts in form of inspiration and information.PurposeThe study aims to investigate how Storyboard as a tool can be used to concretize thoughts and inspiration in a group before ideation.MethodIn order to collect empirical data the authors along with four other facilitators, conducted 24 DO TANK:s for the innovation contest Smart Lunch. The empirical data where then analyzed using theories related to the topic.

This study has been carried out in cooperation with Unilever and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. In areas of statistics and image processing, both the amount of data and the dimensions are increasing rapidly and an interactive Visualization tool that lets the user perform real-time analysis can save valuable time. Real-time cropping and drill-down considerably facilitate the analysis process and yield more accurate decisions. In the Smartdoc project, there has been a request for a component used for smart filtering in multidimensional data sets. As the Smartdoc project aims to develop smart, interactive components to be used on low-end systems, the implementation of the self-organizing map algorithm proposes which dimensions to visualize.

Visualization is a rapidly growing area of computer graphics. Due to the very progressive development of computer technology and especially 3D-graphic boards yesterdays imagination of visualizations, today is a reality. At Saab Bofors Dynamics in Linköping missile systems are developed. Through the development, different subsystems are simulated before the manufacturing starts. The results of these simulations have to be visualized to get a meaning.

This thesis examines the effects of electricity visualization in an office building. The subject was investigated through the creation of a web based Visualization tool that was made accessible to the about 1500 employees in a large office building. The visualization was available for three weeks. During this period interviews, user studies and observations took place in order to evaluate what, if any, effects the visualization had on the attitudes and behaviors in the office. Electricity use data was collected and analyzed to see if the project had a statistically significant effect on the electricity consumption in the office.The results from the interviews and the data analysis indicate that no reduction in electricity consumption took place, and a number of factors that could increase the chances of success were identified.

This paper examines the potential benefits of using augmented reality as a tool for visualizing furniture in a buyer?s own environment before buying it. A simple prototype is developed and tested.  The steps for developing the prototype are described in great detail as well as the tools being used. The prototype is tested both on people working in the furniture business as well as people with experience in buying furniture online. In conclusion the results from the user tests are analyzed and the potential benefits are described.

In the history of scientific visualization techniques there is a lack of social science practices and methodologies. The advent of modern computer graphics brought the use of visualizations into a whole new era, but even though the tools by which such modern visualizations are created become easier to access and use, the lack of social science researchers harvesting the benefits of such tools still remain. This ease of use, increase in power and accessibility plus the ever growing need within the natural sciences to augment the human senses has further complicated the relationship between scientific methodologies, validity, reliability and the use of visualization techniques. This relationship must be explored, demystified and understood in order to fully grasp the impact of visualization practices when incorporated into any given scientific method. Within the social sciences there is one example of a tradition that has since its conception carried within it a graphical notion and a visualization practice.

The Functional Resonance Accident Model is a method developed to analyze complex systems for the purpose of accident prevention. In FRAM-analysis a visualization of the complex system is created as an aid for identifying points of interaction in the system where the risk of accidents is high, and to determine where preventive measures are to be placed. FRAM Visualizer is a computer program developed as a tool for creating such visualizations.Many usability problems have been identified in FRAM visualizations created both manually according to established method and by using the FRAM Visualizer software. The purpose of this paper is to give a basis for how FRAM visualizations can be improved in accordance with usability criteria for use in future qualitative studies.The author suggests alterations to the FRAM visualization to resolve usability issues identified in previous articles and to achieve usability goals derived from visual communication theory. The design process is guided by established design principles.

Due to a growing interest in communication in today?s society the demand for equipment that is used in communication networks increases while the competition between companies that produce this equipment grows. To meet the increasing demand and at the same time having a competitive product development many companies use some effective product design, such as the modular product design. When a modular product design is used it?s good to compare different module configurations for a certain product and to simplify these comparisons some tool can be used.

Swedish healthcare are in need of radical changes to meet the requirements from both the government and the patients to create organisational working methods that better support the patients through their healthcare processes. Digitalization of patient data has been going on for decades in order to increase participation and understanding among patients in their care processes. However, availability of information does not ensure understanding. Therefore, resources should be devoted to create conditions to enable participation. The purpose of this study is to explore how visualization of patient data in the patient?s journal can affect the consultation in the encounter between the doctor and the patient.

A numerical simulation case involving space plasma and the evolution of instabilities that generates very fast electrons, i.e. approximately at half of the speed of light, is used as a test bed for scientific visualisation techniques. A visualisation system was developed to provide interactive real-time animation and visualisation of the simulation results. The work focuses on two themes and the integration of them. The first theme is the storage and management of the large data sets produced.

Forestry in Sweden is currently conducted in a manner aiming at equating the production objectives and the biodiversity. To ensure that biodiversity is maintained, patches that are considered to be valuable now or in the future is saved in final fellings. How the tree retention areas will grow into the future forest stands is yet unknown.The purpose of this study was to visualize how different scenarios of natural consideration taken at final felling will evolve in a long term perspective, for two rotation periods. Projections of the forest conditions were executed with the decision support system Heureka and its applications PlanStart and PlanWise. The information about the projected forests was then used for the visualizations which were created in the software Visual Nature Studio.

This study has been carried out as a part of the EC funded project, SMARTDOC IST-2000-28137, with the objective of developing application components that provide highly interactive visualization and collaboration functionalities. The low-level components from the graphics library AVS OpenViz 2.0 are used as the development basis. The application components can be inserted into electronic documents that allow embedded controls such as web documents or Microsoft Word or PowerPoint documents. Instead of displaying results as static images, a SMARTDOC component provides the ability to visualize data and interact with it inside the document. Although the principal goal of the SMARTDOC project is to create components in a number of different application domains this study concentrates on developing a medical imaging application component in collaboration with the project partners AETmed and professor Alan Jackson at the University of Manchester.

Visualization plays a key role in the concept of Lean. Lean was developed in Japan as a business philosophy in order to lead to an activity, where only steps that contribute to customer value of the final product are being performed. By defining the customer value and establish visualized standards, it is possible to see when situations differ from the standard. Then it?s possible to lead the process back on track.