Simon Gauthier, CSE

Visualisation in the NATO/RSG-30 conext.

Questions: Where are we going? Why haven't we achieved anything? Is our focus right?

The challenge: to reach the next level of visualisation

But: what is this 'next level' and how do we achieve it?

Review of tasks:

1. survey/database ö what is the role of the strawman document?

2. datasets v problems sets ö which is the right medium? or

do we need both?

Bottom line: without regard to cognition and human factors we will fail.

Kathleen Hennesey

Task is vast and requires decomposition. The analysis of different media requires common formats. These are knowlegde elements. To acquire knowledge elements different media need to be assimilated to form these knowledge elements. Inorder to gain knowledge from a collection of knowledge elements, some kind of dissemination must take place. KH's view was that the hard parts were the construction and dissemination of the knowledge not the representation of it.

Simon Gauthier

Questioned whether we have the correct skill set.

Kathleen Hennesey

Sited librarians and information scientists as having the correct skills. These people collate information, index it and then disseminate it.

David McIlroy

Wished that the focus could revert to text based as he perceives that converting text into a useful product is a hard problem.

Kathleen Hennesey

Wished for the inclusion of knowledge extraction from images

Simon Gauthier

Asked what visualisation meant. What about useability for non-expert users? What are the right questions

Kathleen Hennesey

Emphasised that in her view representational issues were secondary and that the real problem was the transition from raw data to knowledge elements.

Diane Keller

Disagreed with KH. In her view the representational issues where not yet solved and this should be the primary focus of the group.