Information Visualization on Small Display Devices.

The amount of information is increasing rapidly all the while the devices with which to access the information are shrinking in size. This leads to a problem of presentation: how to display the growing amounts of information effectively on small displays. This thesis introduces a number of information visualization techniques as solutions to the presentation problem, as well as devices on which the techniques could be used. Further, an evaluation framework is presented, which can be used to assess the suitability of the information visualization techniques for use on the devices in question. The framework draws together the visualization techniques and devices by comparing their corresponding properties. The proposed solutions are evaluated against the framework in the context of two small display devices. As a result, it is found that only one third of the proposed solutions are suitable for use as such on low-end display devices, such as mobile phones. The situation is reversed in the context of high-end display devices, for example handheld computers. In their case only one third of the techniques are found unsuitable for use