At IDV we’ve been advocating the effectiveness of contextualized data visualization since our company’s inception in early 2004 (See a paper we wrote in 2006 for Information Management). No data is an island, and for best understanding data, it should be visualized in context, not in isolation.

Enter LATCH

Helpfully, Richard Wurman, in his 1989 book Information Anxiety put forth the acrostic LATCH for summarizing the five fundamental ways of organizing information--or, also said, contextualizing information.  LATCH conveys that, fundamentally, data can be contextualized in Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy. Data, best visualized, should be put in the context of one of these five, or better yet, a combination. If the data is part of a hierarchy, give visual cues of where the data fits in the hierarchy; if the data is time-based, show it relative to other data (e.g., events) in time; if the data can be shown on a map, do it. It’s that simple.

Space & Time

Which context(s) best fit the data visualization, of course, depends on the data, the business problem, and so on. However, two of these contexts take primacy: Location & Time. We humans think in terms of where something is happening and when, especially in a crisis, and so the best visualizations tend to be permutations of these two. Frankly, it’s hard to imagine an effective dashboard, common operational picture, or situational awareness visualization that does not involve these two contexts.

Enter Visual Fusion 4.5

And so I’m very excited about next week’s release of Visual Fusion 4.5—our product team has done a fantastic job. Hands down there is no better software on the market for visualizing enterprise data in the context of space (location) and time. Our customers can visualize data coming from countless sources--Visual Fusion supports SharePoint (Lists, Doc & Picture Libraries, Enterprise Search, Excel Services, InfoPath), Oracle, SQL Server, ESRI, numerous file formats, web services, WMS, etc & etc)—sources of data our customers can now view on a map, in a timeline, a combination of the two, or through the VF SDK, mix and match with other visualizations.

With Visual Fusion 4.5, the contextualized visualization possibilities are staggering, giving our enterprise customers new ways of gaining insights and value from their data investments.

For a tailored demonstration of Visual Fusion for your organization, please Contact Us. You will like what you see.