The VAST (Visual Analytics Science and Technology (IEEE VAST)) 2008 keynote was delivered by Christian Chabot, CEO of Tableau Software. His main premise was that Information Visualization is reaching an explosion point.
From my research he made some insightful points about the commercial visualization world:
- Visualization is needed by the masses not just by data-heads labeled as analysts.
- Visualization and business/data analytics tools are way behind in usefulness and utility.
- There are several barriers for the common person to welcome a visualization tool namely: no
knowledge of visualization or tools, perception of complexity, convoluted channels for delivery.
- Visualization helps people change their thought process from reporting to discover-research-validate and helps create new questions which are probably the better questions.
I hope to find the talk somewhere so that we can deliver it. Regardless Chabot is a very insightful person and really has a good perspective on the commercial sector of the InfoVis Industry.