A Classification of Skills

A variety of jobs are open to visualization experts. Different skills are required for different jobs, therefore the following classification of skills should distinguish between various requirements of the job market:

Visualization researcher: Visualization researchers perform leading edge research in all areas of the core topics of visualization. Typical job markets are Universities or governmental or industrial research labs.

Application oriented researcher: Researches for expressive and effective visualizations aimed at one specific application area and with specific contraints given. Are able to value and classify their work inside the existing research literature. Contributions to visualization conferences are typically under the category "case studies". Job markets are governmental and industrial research labs and software development departments of large industrial plants.

Professional developer: Develops software for representations in a constraint environment. Typical job markets are software devopment departments and companies.

Professional user: User of a visualization or graphics software package with choices to make such as color tables, choice of representations or even choices of software packages to use.