Visual analytics involves humans working with algorithms to extract information and build visual models and explanations, such as through interactive visualizations that can be manipulated and used to explore and reveal patterns and connections, or that can be combined and 'mashed' with other applications for further exploration and analysis (Kitchin, 2014).
Those geniuses 500 years ago came up with such definitive solutions to pictorial composition that almost all artists, photographers and people who look at a picture are subconsciously influenced by the visual models they invented.
"It really forced both of us to invent new visual models and to extend ourselves as designers," says Lupi, confessing that on one occasion she spent seven hours creating her postcard for the week, drawing more than 700 tiny rectangles depicting the doors she'd opened that week.
The visual models are striking: Our planet is like a giant beach ball completely surrounded by a dense layer of M&M's (the debris in low Earth orbit), and also by sparser concentric circles of M&M's (the debris at other altitudes, such as geostationary orbit, mostly used for telecommunications).
Martin Wattenberg and Fernanda B. Viégas, two researchers at I.B.M. who have studied the site using computerized visual models called "history flows," found that the talk pages and "meta pages" — those dealing with coördination and administration — have experienced the greatest growth.
To improve the quality of their rendering capabilities, the researchers plan to integrate their computing system with a social game that will permit competing teams to add images where they are most needed to improve the quality of the visual models.
It has already been used for over 200 visual models.
In recent years, biologically inspired visual models have raised great interests.
Besides analogical modeling, visual modeling and simulative modeling or thought experiments also play key roles (Nersessian 1992, 1999, 2009).
Speaking more precisely, designers (specialized in 3D-visualization) work with flat projections in order to produce a visual model [167].
The visual model of a powerful car is low and wide, with angled headlights suggesting a frown.
