Blockbuster – A Visual Explorer for Motion Picture Data

In this paper we introduce our visual explorer “Blockbuster” as a contribution to the InfoVis Contest 2007. The system’s development followed a user-centered design process and a design rationale considering not only the pragmatic qualities of the system, but also hedonic qualities like aesthetics or “joy-of-use”. Apart from briefly outlining the employed visualization techniques, we will focus on Blockbuster’s interaction design, which is aimed at facilitating the selection, combination and mutual filtering of visualizations under a consistent interaction paradigm. Blockbuster thereby demonstrates the potential of information visualization for end-user-centered applications that blur the boundaries of information visualization, visual information seeking and browsing.