Retrieval + Use (was Re: [Sigia-l] Information Visualization)

[Listera]

"Johndan Johnson-Eilola" wrote:

> But haven't we had enough proof of concept demos and working models of infoviz
> products to see how the retrieval part works?

Absolutely not, and that's precisely the problem I am referring to.

It's trivial to knock out a whiz bang infoviz demo when you *don't* connect
to large datasets. Many people think, oh well, you can just scale it,
technology will take care of it. What technology? Reminds me of some of the
dotcom business models! It might be easier to visualize when you don't need
to produce. In the real world these models will and do flop.

> All of this starts to get into that distinction between usability and
> usefulness. I think many of the current infoviz apps (both the demos
> and the current commercial apps) are usable, but not very useful in a
> broader sense. I think we're already capable of the retrieval
> aspect--it's the useful aspect, which goes beyond retrieval, that I'm
> not seeing addressed in coherent and ambitious ways yet.

And I think it's worse than that: infoviz fails on *both* grounds, retrieval
and usefulness. I happen to believe it'll be actually easier to correct the
latter.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba