Interactive visualization

For a visualization to be considered interactive, it must satisfy two criteria:

  • Human input: The control of some aspect of the visual representation of information must be available to humans
  • Response time: The changes made by humans must be incorporated into the visualization in a timely manner

When large amounts of data must be processed to create a visualization, this becomes very hard, sometimes impossible, even with the current technology; therefore, "interactive visualization" is usually applied to systems that provide feedback to the users within several seconds of input. Many interactive visualization systems support a metaphor of navigation, analogous to navigation through the physical world.

The benefit of interaction ...

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