Marius Brade

OntoSketch: Towards Digital Sketching as a Tool for Creating and Extending Ontologies for Non-Experts

This paper introduces a sketch-based interaction concept called OntoSketch, enabling non-experts to create and extend formally represented knowledge. Contrary to current editors, OntoSketch is based on lightweight pen and paper-like interactions, including a visual vocabulary that supports non-experts in modeling knowledge about specific domain information. The visualization concept is based on previous work as well as insights from a user study with 20 participants. OntoSketch enables the user to work in three views with his data: created domain examples, related or emerging abstract concepts and a combination of both. This allows for reflection while creating formalized knowledge. An export function allows a non-expert to generate an ontology out of his sketch-based work, without the necessity to understand the concept of ontologies in detail. Our approach is demonstrated via a prototypical tablet-PC application.

Immersive data grasping using the e x plore table

Accustomed to traditional user experiences with mouse and keyboard, designers are challenged to break free and find new and compelling approaches to interaction design for natural user interfaces. Tangible and embodied interaction works in parallel, is quick, and allows cooperative work. This exploration serves to inspire and provoke critical reflection on interaction design for natural user interfaces based on physical substances that are used in everyday life -- like eggs, soap bubbles, and magnets.

BrainDump: an interface for visual information-gathering during web browsing sessions

In this paper a software prototype called BrainDump is described. The approach is focusing on information gathering during web browsing sessions. While performing such a task, the structure and amount of needed data is not known in advance. The system provides the functionality to create and manipulate visual images of mental connections in a dynamic way. Therefore only one single step of interaction is needed. Furthermore the user can follow links back to the source of information, annotate content and hierarchically group collected items.

Natural interface exploration

Finding new and compelling approaches to interaction design for natural user interfaces, is challenging. The Natural Interface Exploration studio will offer participants the opportunity to explore interaction design for natural user interfaces based on physical substances that are used in everyday life. Studio organizers will present an overview of their methodology, providing examples of their experience [1, 2] and comparing it to other approaches. They will demonstrate how they analyze natural substances regarding the aspects of visualization and interaction and what kind of interfaces resulted [3, 4, 5] from these findings in initial workshops (see Figure 3 and 4). Following the demonstration, participants will form teams and collaboratively decide which substances or materials they would like to analyze. After examining and charting relevant aspects, the teams will chose a certain task to be solved with a new kind of interface. Example tasks will be provided by the studio organizers. The next step will be to decompose the tasks into required interaction and information needs. Finally participants will develop their own interface mock-up using stop motion or paper prototyping. Finally, studio organizers will facilitate a group critique session and offer closing thoughts on employing this methodology in ones creative TEI practice.

BrainDump: taking fluid interaction literally

In this paper a new visual interface tool, enabling knowledge workers to use a highly flexible visual map to represent and refine their current understanding of a task, is proposed. For demonstration purposes, a web information gathering task is used, but the concept is not limited to web tasks only. For the proposed visualization a metaphor based on fluids, cell structure and soap bubbles is derived from experiments with natural physical substances. The resulting visual interface allows the user to pin down associations and to clarify anticipations of relations visually.

Between the Lines: A Comparative Study of Freeform-Based Knowledge-Map-Creation with Paper and Tablet

Our research question is: can digital media work as a substitute for traditional pen-and-paper, and can it enhance or support our thinking process? Affordances of paper versus digital and in particular around sketching have been largely discussed in the past. People often prefer pen and paper or whiteboards to software when it comes to the early stages of sensemaking tasks. Nowadays pen-enabled tablet-PCs are supposed to offer a sketching experience similar to pen and paper with good computation power and the ability to respond in real-time to user interactions. Therefore the question arises: how should pen-based interaction and user interfaces be designed to be more productive than pen and paper? We created a prototype tablet application called SketchViz focusing on easy restructuring of information for users and conducted a study comparing both the interactions and visual representations of 25 participants performing a given task using either pen and paper or SketchViz. The results show, that the visual representations made using the prototype were very similar to those made using pen and paper. Users especially liked the way the application allowed them to change size and position of drawn objects on the virtual canvas (which is different from current tools). They also mentioned having a better possibility to switch between detail and overview. Mainly due to technical problems, working with pen and paper was rated easier and was less time consuming. We conclude that if these problems are fixed, SketchViz will offer an interesting starting point for a digital alternative to pen and paper for the early stages of sensemaking tasks.

Using the power of associations: BrainDump - a revised nature inspired visual interface for sensemaking

Creative work -- especially in business -- is often connected to highly complex data. While current software tools support manifold areas in working with complex data, they are very limited to support creative work. Little research has been done on what kinds of representations are supporting the externalization of mental efforts while making sense of new information. It is especially very challenging to provide appropriate representations for abstract associations. In this paper a new interactive visualization in form of a revised prototype based on a user test of a previous version [2], [3] is proposed. Knowledge workers are enabled to use a highly flexible visual map to represent and refine their current understanding of a task. Derived from experiments with natural physical substances a metaphor based on fluids, cell structure and soap bubbles is used. This kind of visualization allows the user to pin down associations and to clarify anticipations about relations visually.

Getting a picture of your thoughts: interactive visualization for creative work

Creative work -- especially in business -- is often connected to highly complex data. While current software tools support manifold areas in working with complex data, they are very limited to support creative work. Little research has been done on what kinds of representations are supporting the externalization of mental efforts in the best way. Especially it is very challenging to give abstract mental concepts an appropriate representation. This doctoral research is creating and investigating novel approaches combining visualizations, interaction concepts and memory techniques to create design guidelines for interactive visualizations for creative work. First experiments have been conducted and the key principles are implemented partially in a prototype called BrainDump.