MonkEllipse: Visualizing the History of Information Visualization

In this paper, we describe the process and result of creating a visualization to capture the past 10 years of history in the field of Information Visualization, as part of the annual InfoVis Conference Contest. We began with an XML file containing data provided by the contest organizers, scrubbed and augmented the data, and created a database to hold the information. We designed a visualization and implemented it using Flash MX 2004 Professional with ActionScript 2.0, PHP, and PostgreSQL. The resulting visualization provides an overview of the field of Information Visualization, and allows users to see the connections between areas of the field, particular researchers, and documents.