Transmogrifiers: Casual Manipulation of Visualizations

Description

A transmogrifier is a novel interface that enables quick, onthe-fly graphic transformations. A region of a graphic can be specified by a shape and transformed into a destination shape with real-time, visual feedback. Both origin and destination shapes can be circles, quadrilaterals or arbitrary shapes defined through touch. Transmogrifiers are flexible, fast and simple to create and invite use in casual InfoVis scenarios, opening the door to alternative ways of exploring and displaying existing visualizations (e.g., rectifying routes or rivers in maps), and enabling free-form prototyping of new visualizations (e.g., lenses)

Transmogrifiers was presented at UIST 2013, and the accompanying software won the UIST 2013 Honorable Mention Demo Award, placing it in the top 3 demos at the event. The software is freely available for download at transmogrifiers.org. Download and begin transmogrifying your own data.

Images and Videos

Straightening rivers. Top: rivers are traced on a map (in green), and transmogrified into a straight shape to present the river’s length for visual comparison while retaining local context.

An overview of the software and several applications.