Keeping things in perspective

This note examines visualization as a special case of "application of virtual reality to data exploration or review." The theses to be developed are:

Surprisingly...

virtual reality need not be visual reality. People really can sustain a strong grasp on a continuing spatial context given some rather meager clues[1].

However...

sustaining grok lock is the key[2]. Users' ability to mentally retain and manipulate spatial models varies widely. Blind people appear to vary more than the general population in this regard[3]. The combined information transfer capacity of the visual display and user's vision is not enough to determine the appropriate presentation of the information -- personalization of the presentation must adapt not only to device and sensory measures but to the user's spatial relations skills as well.

And...

spatial input trades for spatial output. In addition to the user's cognitive skills, the spatial aspect of user input is also more important with less-spatial display. If the view-control part of a model/view/controller architecture is intuitively compelling, a more successful virtual spatialization results[4].

References