Sara Diamond

Output to input: concepts for physical data representations and tactile user interfaces

Tangible user interfaces and physical representations of data are both promising approaches to improving insights derived from large data sets. Interactive tangible representations of data, which seamlessly combine those two approaches, potentially take advantage of cognitive processes, data representations, and interactions not supported by current approaches and may enhance collaboration. This paper describes user evaluations of two sets of prototypes comprised of physical blocks to represent data. One set uses six blocks of identical dimensions and another set uses six blocks with different dimensions. The objectives of this pilot study include (i) making general observations on how users interact with the two prototypes, (ii) making observations on the role these tangible interfaces play in collaboration, and (iii) comparing the two sets of tangible interfaces. We report on the results of the study and discuss future work. make general observations on how users interacted with the tangible interfaces; two, to make observations on the role the tangible interfaces play in collaboration; and three, to compare the two sets of tangible interfaces with one another. We report on the results of the study and discuss future work.

Manipulating Tabletop Objects to Interactively Query a Database

We present a prototype for a Tangible User Interface designed for interactive data visualization, which we believe will be useful for facilitating collaborative work in data analytics. Our hybrid system combines a tabletop graspable user interface with a two-dimensional screen display; the users interrogate the data by manipulating tokens on the tabletop and the screen displays the results of the users query. The objects are tagged using fiducial markers, which are identified with open-source ReacTIVision computer vision software, and the visualization code is written in Processing. In this demonstration, we use radio station listener demographic data, but the system can be used to query various data sets.

Workshop on designing the future of mobile healthcare support

This workshop aims to discuss and develop ideas on how healthcare services, mobile technologies, and visual analytics techniques can be leveraged and contribute to new ways of mobile healthcare supportive system designs. Designing contemporary mobile support systems for healthcare support requires a clear understanding of information requirements, behaviors and basic needs of users. Design must take into account the challenges of human-device interactions in the healthcare environment; the extension of the care environment beyond the institutional setting and the engagement of patients, facility residents and families in an extended circle of care; and issues of formal and informal data sharing and privacy. This workshop invites researchers and designers working in relevant fields to discuss, compare, and demonstrate effective design approaches that can be adopted to improve the designs of mobile support systems for interactive visualization in healthcare.

Wearable haptic gaming using vibrotactile arrays

In this paper we explore the design, layout and configuration of wrist-wearable, haptic gaming interfaces, which involve visual and vibrotactile spatial and temporal patterns. Our goal is to determine overall layouts and spatial and temporal resolutions on the wrist suitable for interactive tactile stimuli. Our approach is to first explore the simplest of configurative patterns that are intended to encircle the wrist, and then study their affordances. We describe various informal user studies we have employed to explore and test issues that arose.

User-Centered Taxonomy for Urban Transportation Applications.

The widespread use of urban software and information technology infrastructure systems now demand new levels of complexity in data generation and data application across interoperating domains. Given this context, and discoveries in visual analytics research that reveal knowledge is created, verified, refined and shared through the interactive manipulation of the visualization (Pike et al. 2009), defining a taxonomy of visualizations can assist visualization system designers in understanding key visualization techniques that serve multiple linked user groups (Chengzhi et al. 2003). It could also be meaningful to others working in sectors that are now in the process of interoperating through the pervasive nature of digital economies. Understanding the potential components of a taxonomy for these forms of data visualization demands the identification of inter-relating and diverse user groups utilizing the same data for multiple tasks (Mahyar et al. 2015), the complexity of visualization processes, relevant task levels and interactions to supplement human insights. For example, a visualization displaying urban transit data might support the requirements of a wide array of users such as urban-designers, city-planners, data-scientists, engineers, transit-managers, pedestrians and transit users. This paper discusses the taxonomy design and prototype creation process for a user-centered taxonomy for urban transportation applications developed by the Visual Analytics Lab at OCAD University, as part of the VAL’s research and design contribution to the iCity research project, a collaboration between academic researchers, industry partners, city transportation planning departments and transit authorities that seeks to develop software support systems for transportation planning.

Building Tools for Creative Data Exploration: A Comparative Overview of Data-Driven Design and User-Centered Design

Visualization scientists seek means to inspire insights from data, which require creative thinking on the part of analysts as well as cognitive reasoning. In information visualization a focus on the user has proven highly effective in the design of usable and engaging interfaces, although it has been argued that such a focus limits innovation in insights about the data and in the creation of metaphors for visualization. If a user-centered design recapitulates existing knowledge, then a design approach which derives exclusively from the data may provide more innovative results. Our approach considers both the designers and the users, whereby our goal is to elicit creativity in both the design of visualization tools and in their application. We compare user-centered design and data-driven design through tool sets that emerged from each of these methods. User-centered design methodologies were used in the creation of a custom interface for editors at a major national newspaper that visualizes measures of each story’s popularity. Data-driven design methodologies were used to create a tangible user interface for data visualization. With UCD we built a tool that supported the use of data in editorial decisions and deployed familiar metaphors to encourage significant change in workplace practice. With DDD we unleashed creativity on the part of analysts which resulted in a more innovative approach on the part of designers and a gateway to new user communities. We compare strengths and weaknesses of each methodology through a reflection of our design outcomes.

Analyzing Student Travel Patterns With Augmented Data Visualizations

Visualization and visual analytics tools can provide critical support for experts and stakeholders to understand transportation flows and related human activities. Correlating and representing quantitative data with data from human actors can provide explanations for patterns and anomalies. We conducted research to compare and contrast the capabilities of several tools available for visualization and decision support as a part of an integrated urban informatics and visualization research project that develops tools for transportation planning and decision making. For this research we used the data collected by the StudentMoveTO (Toronto) survey which was conducted in the fall of 2015 by Torontos four universities with the goal of collecting detailed data to understand travel behaviour and its effect on the daily routines of the students. This paper discusses the usefulness of new software which can allow designers to build meaningful narratives integrating 3D representations to assist in Geo-spatial analysis of the data.

The Infinite Canvas: A Novel Presentation of Newspaper Search Results on a Tablet

We propose a prototype for displaying news media search results on a tablet device. The Infinite Canvas is intended to enrich the search experience by allowing users to take advantage of spatial relationships in a digital environment to understand connections between news articles. We describe how search results can appear along an X and Y axis. We present the results of evaluations of both the initial prototype and a revised prototype with participants using a tablet in order to (i) better understand user interaction through the completion of tasks and (ii) test assumptions regarding the display of search results by time, relevancy and popularity. Participants responded positively to the infinite canvas, and provided various suggestions for future iterations, which we discuss.

Time tremors: developing transmedia gaming for children

Time Tremors is a transmedia experience for children aged 8-14 that crosses television, web, locative media, and mobile apps. Time Tremors is a collection game in which players search for objects from history supposedly scattered throughout time and space, hidden, invisible to the human eye but detectable and collectable using a variety of mobile and online broadband technologies. Extending the game into locative augmented reality and mobile play was an applied research challenge that required narrative continuity while ensuring safe play.

Discursive navigation of online news

As a response to the current navigational format of online news, which is linear, chronological, and heavily delineated by topics, we propose a more discursive and heuristic model of navigation that will offer readers a variety of lenses, interpretations, and pathways to read through a news site. Through an analysis of two prominent discursive models of knowledge---Foucaults Discursive Formations and Deleuze and Guattaris Rhizome---we can determine an organizational framework that is more representative of human memory and associative connections. This discursive framework is put into practice through the interactive and exploratory medium of data visualization, shown in a sketch-based format.