Florian Windhager

University for Continuing Education Krems · Department of Arts and Cultural Studies

The investigation of biography data as consistently time-oriented information connecting multiple data dimensions can be supported by multiple visualization perspectives. Biographical and prosopographical database projects contain temporally structured datasets connecting events, places, people, institutions with a variety of relations between them...

Stories are an essential mode, not only of human communication—but also of thinking. This paper reflects on the internalization of stories from a cognitive perspective and outlines a visualization framework for supporting the analysis of narrative geotemporal data. We discuss the strengths and limitations of standard techniques for representing spa...

After decades of digitization, large cultural heritage collections have emerged on the web, which contain massive stocks of content from galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. This increase in digital cultural heritage data promises new modes of analysis and increased levels of access for academic scholars and casual users alike. Going beyond...

If there ever was a model theme for information visualization, climate change arguably checks all the boxes. Omnipresent and relevant, yet abstract and statistical by nature, as well as invisible for the naked eye - climate change is a subject matter in need for perception and cognition support par excellence. Consequently, a large number of data j...

Complexity is often seen as a inherent negative in information design, with the job of the designer being to reduce or eliminate complexity, and with principles like Tufte's "data-ink ratio" or "chartjunk" to operationalize minimalism and simplicity in visualizations. However, in this position paper, we call for a more expansive view of complexity...

Digital humanists have often been criticized as too technology-driven and for a lack of theoretical work. In this paper, we discuss theories from Cognitive Science on the extended mind , which provide a productive framework to theorize the use of tools and technologies for the sake of cognitive self-enhancement. Viewed through this lens, humans con...

Knowledge communication in cultural heritage and digital humanities currently faces two challenges, which this paper addresses: On the one hand, data-driven storytelling in these fields has mainly focused on human protagonists, while other essential entities (such as artworks and artifacts, institutions, or places) have been neglected. On the other...

The richness of social and cultural theory in the humanities offers countless opportunities for using theory-informed concepts in data-based analysis workflows. The contributors to this volume thus encourage further research utilizing out-of-the-box models and approaches to space and place in the field of Digital Humanities. The collection follows...

Mental models are internal representations of external phenomena. During their interaction with visualizations, the users construct mental models to represent these visualizations internally, to visually reason on them and solve problems with them. This chapter synthesizes existing theories on mental models and visualization to discuss their role a...

Large volumes of biographical text collections have been digitized and developed into structured research databases in recent years. In order to strengthen the historiographical relevance and acceptance of these data collections, this paper discusses two interdependent technological objectives. First, it summarizes advanced visual analysis techniqu...

Die digitale Dokumentation von Objekten und ihre virtuelle Verfügbarkeit bieten enorme Chancen für Forschung, Vermittlung und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Sie stellen Museen und Universitäten aber auch vor etliche Fragen und Herausforderungen: Mit welchen Zielen und Werkzeugen digitalisieren wir unsere Bestände? Welche Zugänge zu ihnen wollen wir gestatt...

Die digitale Dokumentation von Objekten und ihre virtuelle Verfügbarkeit bieten enorme Chancen für Forschung, Vermittlung und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit. Sie stellen Museen und Universitäten aber auch vor etliche Fragen und Herausforderungen: Mit welchen Zielen und Werkzeugen digitalisieren wir unsere Bestände? Welche Zugänge zu ihnen wollen wir gestatt...

Cultural object collections attract and delight spectators since ancient times. Yet, they also easily overwhelm visitors due to their perceptual richness and associated information. Similarly, digitized collections appear as complex, multifaceted phenomena, which can be challenging to grasp and navigate. Though visualizations can create various typ...

In cultural collections and art-historical bodies of knowledge, uncertainty is all over the place. Visualization approaches to corresponding data and topics are currently learning to deal with various aspects of uncertainty and ambiguity; yet, design practice and theoretical reflections cannot rely on a mature footing until now. With this position...

The digitization of cultural archives and historical records is opening up new avenues for biographical research and teaching. On the one hand, historical ouevres and lifework collections can be newly visualized for different audiences. On the other hand, biographical trajectories can be represented and analyzed in an unforeseen manner. But how do...

Information visualizations can amplify human cognition by transferring strenuous cognitive operations with abstract data into visual reasoning processes with external graphic representations. Cognitive scientists have conceptualized the internal representations emerging in such distributed cognitive systems as mental models, whose structures and dy...

Uncertainty is a standard condition under which large parts of art-historical and curatorial knowledge creation and communication are operating. In contrast to standard levels of data quality in non-historical research domains, historical object and knowledge collections contain substantial amounts of uncertain, ambiguous, contested, or plainly mis...

Trust is an important factor that mediates whether a user will rely and build on the information displayed in a visualization. Research in other fields shows that there are different mechanisms of trust building: Users might elaborate the information deeply and gain a good understanding of the uncertainties in the data and quality of the informatio...

Das Studium von historischen Daten- und Textbeständen kann durch Techniken der Informationsvisualisierung multimodal erweitert und unterstützt werden. Biographische Datenbanken modellieren das Leben von historischen Akteuren als zeitlich strukturierte Verknüpfungen von Personen, Ereignissen, Orten, Organisationen, Objekten, Konzepten und anderer En...

Spatiotemporal visualizations pose certain challenges for comprehension and reasoning processes. This specifically applies to casual users who want to gain an overview of the spatiotemporal origins of large cultural collections in a relatively short time. Based on a distributed cognition approach, we compare four visualization techniques (coordinat...

In addition to providing pleasant and stimulating experiences, complex cultural collections can require significant amounts of cognitive work on the part of visitors. Whether collections are situated in physical spaces or presented via web-based interfaces, the sheer richness and diversity of artefacts and their associated information can frequentl...

The study of biography data-and the reasoning with it-can be supported by multiple visualization techniques. Biographical databases contain massive amounts of temporally structured biographical entries, connecting events, places, institutions and actors with a variety of relations between them. We present a synoptic visualization concept for multi-...

Almost 100 years ago, Otto Neurath developed the Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education) method to communicate statistical information to the broad public in an intuitive, pictorial way. It translates numerical data into arrangements of repeated pictograms. This method is still well-used in information design and data journa...

Information visualizations (InfoVis) in the context of political communication are designed to convey a broad understanding of socio-political data and their multitude of intricately connected variables to the public. A cognitive framework to explain and empirically study how users acquire and organize their internal representations gained from Inf...

Open government data initiatives provide citizens with access to the information that governments have about their countries (such as data about people, resources, infrastructure, or services) upon which they act. Information visualizations can help to make sense of these complex data and knowledge collections, but are mostly used to shed light on...

After decades of digitization, the web hosts a large scale museum, consisting of millions of digital cultural objects. To balance the drawbacks of parsimonious search-centric interfaces, various approaches have been developed to enable also visual access to these collections, and to browse and explore the cultural richness of existing archives. Thi...

Users of information visualization systems build up internal representations of the displayed information and the system --mental models -- and constantly update them during interaction with the system. Though this theoretical approach was postulated as promising for information visualization, measures for empirical studies are missing. In this pap...

During the last decades, digitization broadened access to cultural heritage collections for public audiences. Large online databases have been prepared for open access with simple search interfaces or visual exploration methods. In this position paper we discuss new challenges arising from these initiatives with regard to casual users. To meet t...

Research into the use of information visualizations (InfoVis) covers various areas, i.e. how users perceive, interact with, or make sense of abstract data through the use of visual interfaces. With regard to more complex topics in the context of political communication, the question shifts to: How do users organize their internal representations ga...

Patents, archived as large collections of semi-structured text documents, contain valuable information about historical trends and current states of R&D fields, as well as performances of single inventors and companies. Specific methods are needed to unlock this information and enable its insightful analysis by investors, executives, funding agenci...

Information visualization offers multiple methods to make sense of complex data by graphic representations. Complementing verbal representations, they show rich potential to support cognition and communication in numerous areas of application, including the field of political communication and education. Yet – despite a strong increase in options w...

This article takes information visualization to the field of academic conferences and conventions, to explore how cognition and communication of participants could be supported in such ephemeral, knowledge-intensive environments. With focus on a non-invasive method of data collection, we consider the levels of topical, social, temporal and spatial...

In recent years, the analysis of dynamic network data has become an increasingly prominent research issue. While several visual analytics techniques with the focus on the examination of temporal evolving networks have been proposed in recent years, their effectiveness and utility for end users need to be further analyzed. When dealing with techniqu...

Konferenzen, Kongresse und Tagungen ermöglichen Menschen, auch außerhalb ihres eigenen Arbeitsfelds neue Kontakte für innovative Kooperationen zu knüpfen. Durch empirische Netzwerkanalysen konnte jedoch gezeigt werden, dass sich Teilnehmer von Veranstaltungen nicht so vernetzen, wie sie das gerne hätten.

As an interdisciplinary research endeavor into the foundations of human and artificial intelligence, cognitive science has substantial contributions to offer to the field of translation studies. Like any other explanatory approach to socially embedded and organized behavior, cognitive science deals with hard-to-resolve dichotomies such as static ve...

The analysis of dynamic network data has become an increasingly relevant research issue, showing a high potential for applied use in organizations. To unlock its potential also for the target user group of non-domain experts, we introduce a software prototype, which provides different views on network dynamics, intertwining network analytical measu...

Consideration of current developments in cognitive science is indispensable when defining research agendas addressing cognitive aspects of translation. One such development is the recognition of the extended nature of human cognition: Cognition is not just an information manipulation process in the brain, it is contextualised action embedded in a b...

A well-designed visualization of dynamic networks has to support the analysis of both temporal and relational features at once. In particular to solve complex synoptic tasks, the users need to understand the topological structure of the network, its evolution over time, and possible interdependencies. In this paper, we introduce the application of...

Cultural heritage exhibitions commonly have to arrange a high amount of diverse artefacts and associated information in architecturally complex facilities. This constellation issues challenges to both: exhibition designers who have to find ways to deal with spatial restrictions and visitors who often experience cognitive overload and museum fatigue...

The potential of social network analysis (SNA) to foster knowledge management initiatives by providing insights into organizational communication and collaboration infrastructures has been the topic of frequent discussion (Swan et. al., 1999; Cross et. al., 2001, 2003; Marouf, 2007; Marouf and Doreian, 2010). In contrast to the formal tree structur...

Collaboration is the way work gets done in organisations. Therefore social networks of different types, functions and compositions have become an inevitable precondition of organisational performance. Moreover, these networks are not static, but changing over time. Organisational analysts are seeking for appropriate tools and methods supporting the...

A well-designed visualization of dynamic networks has to support the analysis of both temporal and relational features at once. In particular to solve complex synoptic tasks, the users need to understand the topological structure of the network, its evolution over time, and possible interdependencies. In this paper, we introduce the application of...

Despite its well-known potential for applied use in organizations, social network analysis seems to fail relevant business analytical requirements in the areas of organizational change and software usability for non-expert users like managers and consultants. This position paper takes on this challenge by outlining a strategy of user-driven softwar...

The visualization and analysis of dynamic networks have become increasingly important in several fields, for instance sociology or economics. The dynamic and multi-relational nature of this data poses the challenge of understanding both its topological structure and how it changes over time. In this paper we propose a visual analytics approach for...

In this paper, we present a case study of applying visual analytics methods to explore a dynamic social network. The visualization and analysis of this kind of data is challenging because of its relational and temporal nature. We illustrate a method and its prototypical implementation that integrate: the combination of three views based on node-lin...

This chapter presents the results of an iterative design and evaluation process relating to the cognitive and technical requirements on information to be displayed on variable message signs (VMS) and conventional road signs. It was carried out within the framework of the IN-SAFETY research project, as a set of proposed measures and implementation s...

Die Stärken der Sozialen Netzwerkanalyse in der Darstellung tatsächlicher Kommunikationsflüsse und informeller Muster der Zusammenarbeit in Gruppen und Organisationen wurden bereits weitgehend diskutiert. Verschiedene Kombinationen von Methoden und Algorithmen stehen zu Verfügung, um kommunikative Beziehungsmuster zu erheben und als statische Netzw...

In this paper, we examine the consequences of knowledge asymmetries in complex communication scenarios, looking especially at those situations in which professionals - in our cases translators and visual information designers - are required to manage communication for other parties, produce texts and design information. After describing the general...

The influence of expertise on viewing soccer matches is already an area of extensive research focusing on training. However, free viewing of soccer matches did receive less attention. In an explorative eye-tracking study we compared the viewing behavior of novices, amateur players, and professional players watching soccer scenes freely. Overall, no...

Im Rahmen des vorliegenden Artikels soll die Entwicklung der Kognitionswissenschaft von ihren Anfängen hin zu ihrer heutigen Form nachgezeichnet werden, die durch das multiparadigmatische Nebeneinander von vielen einander ergänzenden Ansätzen gekennzeichnet ist (Teil 1). Dabei soll vor allem eine Entwicklungslinie hervorgehoben werden, die unter de...

So allgegenwärtig Organisationen in der modernen Gesellschaft auch sind und so unverzichtbar sie zu Regelung und Erhalt aller Lebensbereiche auch sein mögen, so allgegenwärtig sind auch Phänomene der Intransparenz oder Unverständlichkeit dieser komplexen sozialen Systeme für externe Beobachter und interne Mitglieder1.Dies gilt prinzipiell für größe...