eyePilot™ and Color Data Analysis

Color is used on computer displays to present, encode and explain information.  This is useful, but with complicated data sets, such as those found in mapping, engineering, finance, biotech and scientific research, the complex color patterns that result can actually be confusing.  Even for someone with normal color vision, similar colors can end up representing quite different data values, data patterns can be difficult to recognize, and findings or concepts that the data presents can be difficult to tease out.
Part of the problem lies in the nature of consciousness: your conscious mind can attend to one or perhaps one-and-a-half tasks at same time.  With data represented by a complex color image, you can aggregate in your mind one color’s pattern, for example, but it is difficult at the same time to also think about what that pattern means. 

For example, at left is a topographic map expressing elevation by the use of color: high elevations are red, sea level green, sea trenches blue and so forth: It is difficult to both gather in your mind all the pale green sea level areas and  at the same time really think about what that pattern might imply. 

By using the eyePilot Gray tool, however, you can simplify the image by selecting all green areas and making everything else in the image gray.  Now, with the color aggregation taken care of by eyePilot, you can start to notice and think about new concepts:  you can easily see that sea level is not actually as widespread a location for human habitation as one might have thought, that the Amazon basin is one of the largest areas of sea level land, and other interesting facts.

Another problem in complex color data is that different items might be represented by quite similar colors, making them hard to discern or differentiate.

Note that in the original map at left, the elevation differences in the vicinity of  Florida are difficult to understand because the sea level and near sea level heights are represented by the color range of greens to cyans.  For people with normal color vision, green and cyan are difficult to separate visually.

As shown here, by using the eyePilot Hue tool to interactively change the color mapping, you can find a setting where these elevations are much easier to differentiate.

Frames that have been transformed by the eyePilot tools can be printed or saved in a variety of file formats from within the eyePilot program for inclusion in reports and presentations.

Click HERE to see an animated Flash demo of the eyePilot tools.

Click HERE to download a free 30-day trial of eyePilot (but please view the brief Flash demo first).