The structure of the information visualization design space

Research on information visualization has reached the point where a number of successful point designs have been proposed and a variety of techniques have been discovered. It is now appropriate to describe and analyze portions of the design space so as to understand the differences among designs and to suggest new possibilities. This paper proposes an organization of the information visualization literature and illustrates it with a series of examples. The result is a framework for designing new visualizations and augmenting existing designs.