PedaViz: visualising hour-level pedestrian activity

Effective visualisation plays a vital role in generating insights from data. The selection of graph types however, is highly dependent on the analysis tasks and data types at hand. For example, spatio-temporal visualisations encode changes in data over time and space. Although they have the potential of revealing overall tendencies and movement patterns, building effective spatio-temporal visualisations is challenging because it requires encoding all three attributes of spatio-temporal data i.e. thematic (values of attributes), temporal and spatial in a single visualisation. In this application design study, we present PedaViz for representing hour-level spatio-temporal attributes within a single visualisation; a 24-hour radial visual metaphor that encodes hour-level temporal and daily temperature attributes while utilising a thematic map display to present spatial attributes. The design was applied on city planning domain using Melbourne's pedestrian count and temperature data. Results of our preliminary user evaluation suggest that our visualisation is easily understandable by users; and supports users in carrying out selected analysis tasks.