Visual Rhetoric and Visualization Tools - 9 views

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  #1 Dmitry Lytov on 24 Feb 14

   

  All the visualization tools can be classified as related to qualitative, quantitative or mixed data. Most of the tools are focused on qualitative research, and can to certain extent be considered as free (although less functional) analogs of NVivo.
  
  To start with, http://voyeurtools.org looked rather disappointing. Currently a lot of software include an option of creating word clouds, including NVivo, which is widely used in Carleton. Its corpus-related tools are also implemented better in other software. I did not find anything new or attractive in this tool. Compared to free tools, it is less functional compared to Wordseer already discussed at our previous classes. SimpleTCT also reminds NVivo a lot, although more by its functions related to text coding, and its functionality does not impress much either.
  
  Graphviz offers a lot of good options but requires knowledge of its own special algorithmic language, and is for this reason not easy to use for beginners. The same is applicable to D3, a successor to Protovis, which has even richer options but requires knowledge of JavaScript. RForge may have rich options but its documentation is too raw and obscure -- I could not even understand its main features by reading the site.
  
  Compared to these, ManyEyes and NodeXL look much more attractive, they are very well documented, their interfaces are easy to master for beginners and include quite a rich set of functions. They offers multiple options of building logical trees representing data in large databases (libraries, archives etc.) and are in fact good ffreeware analogs to Nvivo. If I had to pick up a tool for a purely qualitative research, I'd pick up NodeXL or ManyEyes.
  
  ImagePlot stands out of the row, as it works not as much with texts as with multimedia and allows creating multimedia clouds (pictures etc.).
  
  Finally, Mondrian is probably the only one that combines features of a qualitative research tool with several quantitative functions, which allows creating maps and graphs based on numeric data. This one deserves a more profound analysis; as I do not have any other comparable tools, I will just evaluate this one as "very good for the reason of absence of competition".

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">All the visualization tools can be classified as related to qualitative, quantitative or mixed data. Most of the tools are focused on qualitative research, and can to certain extent be considered as free (although less functional) analogs of NVivo. <br /> <br /> To start with, <a href="http://voyeurtools.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://voyeurtools.org</a> looked rather disappointing. Currently a lot of software include an option of creating word clouds, including NVivo, which is widely used in Carleton. Its corpus-related tools are also implemented better in other software. I did not find anything new or attractive in this tool. Compared to free tools, it is less functional compared to Wordseer already discussed at our previous classes. SimpleTCT also reminds NVivo a lot, although more by its functions related to text coding, and its functionality does not impress much either. <br /> <br /> Graphviz offers a lot of good options but requires knowledge of its own special algorithmic language, and is for this reason not easy to use for beginners. The same is applicable to D3, a successor to Protovis, which has even richer options but requires knowledge of JavaScript. RForge may have rich options but its documentation is too raw and obscure -- I could not even understand its main features by reading the site. <br /> <br /> Compared to these, ManyEyes and NodeXL look much more attractive, they are very well documented, their interfaces are easy to master for beginners and include quite a rich set of functions. They offers multiple options of building logical trees representing data in large databases (libraries, archives etc.) and are in fact good ffreeware analogs to Nvivo. If I had to pick up a tool for a purely qualitative research, I'd pick up NodeXL or ManyEyes. <br /> <br /> ImagePlot stands out of the row, as it works not as much with texts as with multimedia and allows creating multimedia clouds (pictures etc.). <br /> <br /> Finally, Mondrian is probably the only one that combines features of a qualitative research tool with several quantitative functions, which allows creating maps and graphs based on numeric data. This one deserves a more profound analysis; as I do not have any other comparable tools, I will just evaluate this one as "very good for the reason of absence of competition".</div>

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