Publisher Summary
This chapter describes ways in which artificial realities can enable one to deal more effectively with data. Visualization is one of the best hopes for making more effective use of data. The goal of visualization is to represent data in ways that make them perceptible and thus, able to engage human sensory systems. The three, nonexclusive ways in which visualization can help one in using and interpreting data are: (1) selective emphasis, (2) transformation, and (3) contextualization. Nonvisual data can be transformed into a visual image by mapping its values into visual characteristics. A system takes on the aura of artificial reality as it exhibits an increasingly tight coupling between an expanded range of input and a broader range of feedback options. In conventional graphic user interfaces, users are restricted to a keyboard and a single-point input device such as a mouse, with visual feedback, and generally no sonic feedback beyond that of a system beep or two.
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