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Definition
Iconic displays are visualizations that generalize traditional displays (especially scatterplots) where each record, instead of being drawn as a point, is represented by a more general primitive called an icon or glyph. The goals are to harness human perception, especially texture, and to display many more parameters. Whereas a pixel is driven by three data values from some color model (typically red, green, and blue) an icon is a geometric object driven by potentially many values, with some icons displaying over 30. Some icons are drawn using lines, some using colored areas, some move and vibrate, and some even have sound output. Some iconic displays drop the Cartesian base of the underlying display and use alternative layout techniques. However, in all of these, the key defining factor is the representation of a record in a visualization by a very general, most often geometric, primitive, with the goal of producing more...
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Grinstein, G., Berry, D.A. (2009). Iconic Displays. In: LIU, L., ÖZSU, M.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Database Systems. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1130
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-39940-9_1130
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