4WWW95: panel: visualizing the Web

visualization might be used to show:

• hot spots
• chances in documents
• search strategies
• a three dimensional "walk trough data space"
• the number of request geographically
• the structure of the documents

• of the limited number of pixels on the screen
• it requires some kind of data reduction

one of the members of the panel showed pictures of visualized Web spaces which clearly unveiled the limitations of visualization. one picture, for example, showed the relations between documents and was so filled with squares (representing the documents) and lines (representing the links) that it was not possible to gain any information at all. once the information was reduced so that the picture became readable, the amount of information was so little, that it was of no use at all.