Making Data Visual

Chapter 8. Case Study 2: Visualizing Biological Data

Chapter 7 described a fairly straightforward case of a business intelligence challenge. This chapter chooses a somewhat more complex example from a very different domain. The question in this scenario was a challenge to operationalize: it required substantial scientific background. The complex scientific data meant that both the meaning and use of the data required more technical context and collaboration to operationalize.

This project was a collaboration with a team of biologists, led by Prof. Angela DePace at the Harvard Medical School. Miriah and her colleagues worked with this group for two years. During that time Miriah carried out a series of data counseling interviews, getting to know the ways that the biologists approached their data. In the process she developed a series of visualization prototypes, and the scientists used the prototypes to progressively refine their operationalization. These prototypes initially helped Miriah to understand the problem, then later to help shape the biologists’ analysis. The final version became a vital component of the group’s analysis pipeline.

This chapter illustrates how the techniques presented in Chapter 6 allowed the scientists to organize their data and to make sense of how a multitude of attributes relate to each other. The result used various design patterns (overview+detail, small multiples, interactive multiform views, and overlays) to give the scientists a detailed, intensive ...