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In an effort to develop visualization analysis and design skills in master's level information visualization students, the authors use a well-known analytical usability evaluation method, heuristic evaluation, with different sets of heuristics to teach students to analyze visualization applications. The proposed approach, used for three consecutive years, has successfully stimulated critical analysis and discussion sessions as well as helped raise students' awareness concerning the benefit of using systematic analysis methods and the strategies and guidelines that should be used to design visualization applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Geophysical experts aimed to establish a method to identify contamination by landfill leakage without chemically analyzing subsoil samples, which is time-consuming and expensive. To that end, researchers developed a software package that let the experts create 3D visualizations of geophysical data acquired around the landfill and apply statistical analysis to detect anomalous values. The data used, electrical resistivity, are typically sparse. So, the application employs kriging to interpolate the data and provide a volumetric representation of the subsoil resistivity. To avoid invalid conclusions, the visualization also represents uncertainty. The application enabled the experts to better understand the phenomenon and to develop and validate their method. Their evaluation of the application indicated that it helped them throughout the method's development and significantly eased their workload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past 10 years have seen profound changes in visualization algorithms, techniques, methodologies, and applications. These changes are forcing alterations to visualization courses. Unfortunately, outdated course content recommendations, together with profound changes in the underlying technology and methodology, are producing an unstable ground for educators at a time when visual representations are becoming increasingly important. To address this issue, educators held meetings or workshops at Siggraph 2011 and 2012 and a panel and workshop at Eurographics 2012. This article presents the insights gathered at these events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Polygonal meshes are used in several application areas to model different objects and structures. Depending on the application, mesh models sometimes have to be processed to, for instance, reduce their complexity (mesh simplification). Such operations introduce differences regarding the original mesh, whose evaluation is of paramount importance when choosing the processing methods to be applied for a particular purpose. Although some mesh analysis and comparison tools are described in the literature, little attention has been given to the way mesh features and mesh comparison results can be visualized. Moreover, particular functionalities have to be made available to enable systematic use and proper data analysis and exploration. PolyMeCo—a tool for polygonal mesh analysis and comparison—was designed and developed taking the above objectives into account. It enhances the way users analyze features and compare meshes by providing an integrated environment where various mesh quality measures and several visualization options are available and can be used in a coordinated way, thus leading to greater insight into the visualized data. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]