A novel approach for exploring annotated data with interactive lenses

Abstract

We introduce a novel approach for assisting users in exploring 2D data representations with an interactive lens. Focus-and-context exploration is supported by translating user actions to the joint adjustments in camera and lens parameters that ensure a good placement and sizing of the lens within the view. This general approach, implemented using standard device mappings, overcomes the limitations of current solutions, which force users to continuously switch from lens positioning and scaling to view panning and zooming. Navigation is further assisted by exploiting data annotations. In addition to traditional visual markups and information links, we associate to each annotation a lens configuration that highlights the region of interest. During interaction, an assisting controller determines the next best lens in the database based on the current view and lens parameters and the navigation history. Then, the controller interactively guides the user's lens towards the selected target and displays its annotation markup. As only one annotation markup is displayed at a time, clutter is reduced. Moreover, in addition to guidance, the navigation can also be automated to create a tour through the data. While our methods are generally applicable to general 2D visualization, we have implemented them for the exploration of stratigraphic relightable models. The capabilities of our approach are demonstrated in cultural heritage use cases. A user study has been performed in order to validate our approach.