I think this is excellent for education, because of the side benefits that comes with it...like thinking more along the lines of, and learning about, what the users are doing with the tool. It's also somewhat contrary to the state of lots of education, which often focuses on generalizing as a way of understanding rather than finding specificity.
However, in real-life, figuring out all of the specific ways in which a user might want to use your tool can be mind-bogglingly difficult. In many cases, the specific few use-cases works, which means you can often just automate away most of the infovis stuff and just get to the result.
But when you have more than just a handful of these use-cases, or the use-cases are not well enumerated, the generalized approach can work better, and that approach for infoviz is often "exploration". In fact, building the generalized tool is often a good way at discovering the more specific use-cases for later rethinking, simplification and capture-in-code.
In that sense, the exploration infoviz tool can act as kind of a meta-exploration tool for figuring out what your users really need when they aren't otherwise able to articulate it.
However, in real-life, figuring out all of the specific ways in which a user might want to use your tool can be mind-bogglingly difficult. In many cases, the specific few use-cases works, which means you can often just automate away most of the infovis stuff and just get to the result.
But when you have more than just a handful of these use-cases, or the use-cases are not well enumerated, the generalized approach can work better, and that approach for infoviz is often "exploration". In fact, building the generalized tool is often a good way at discovering the more specific use-cases for later rethinking, simplification and capture-in-code.
In that sense, the exploration infoviz tool can act as kind of a meta-exploration tool for figuring out what your users really need when they aren't otherwise able to articulate it.