Golden Log Widget Transposes Histograms via Spiral Segmentation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) face inefficiencies in data visualization, particularly with histograms, which consume significant screen space and attempts to condense them often result in loss of fidelity or cumbersome user experiences.
Innovation Solution
The golden log widget transforms histograms into a compact, visually rich format using a logarithmic spiral and quarter circles, allowing for scalable and rotatable sectors to represent data segments, maintaining high fidelity and readability.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If a histogram is used to visualize data, then data fidelity is maintained, but screen real estate consumption increases
Solution Approach 1:
The histogram is divided into multiple pages, with each page displaying a subset of bins. Users can navigate between pages to view different portions of the complete dataset, allowing full data fidelity to be maintained while only displaying a compact portion on each screen.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent introduces navigation controls that add a temporal dimension to the visualization, allowing users to move through different pages of histogram data. This transforms the spatial problem into a space-time solution, maintaining data completeness while reducing instantaneous screen requirements.
2Area of stationary object
If histogram data is condensed into other visualizations, then screen real estate is reduced, but data fidelity is lost
Solution Approach 1:
Rather than condensing all histogram data into a single compact view that would lose detail, the patent segments the data across multiple pages. Each page maintains full fidelity for its subset of bins, and navigation allows access to all segments, preserving overall data fidelity while achieving compact display.
3Area of stationary object
If a compact visualization is used, then screen real estate efficiency improves, but user interaction complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The system pre-organizes the histogram data into discrete pages with clear navigation controls. This preliminary structuring allows users to interact with the compact visualization through simple, predictable page navigation rather than complex gestures or actions, maintaining ease of operation despite the compact format.
Data Source
AI summary
A histogram of values recorded during time units in a time period is represented by dividing the time period into a set of time segments, each time segment thereby being associated with a subset of histogram bins. A graph is displayed that includes drawing an expanding spiral according to a golden ratio spiral, and defining a set of quarter circles using the expanding spiral, each quarter circle having an edge formed by a portion of the expanding spiral, and a center. Drawn within a quarter circle is a set of sectors about the center of the quarter circle. The quarter circle represents a time segment and the set of sectors represent time units.