Sungsoo (Ray) Hong

Touchscreen prompts for preschoolers: designing developmentally appropriate techniques for teaching young children to perform gestures

Though toddlers and preschoolers are regular touchscreen users, relatively little is known about how they learn to perform unfamiliar gestures. In this paper we assess the responses of 34 children, aged 2 to 5, to the most common in-app prompting techniques for eliciting specific gestures. By reviewing 100 touchscreen apps for preschoolers, we determined the types of prompts that children are likely to encounter. We then evaluated their relative effectiveness in teaching children to perform simple gestures. We found that children under 3 were only able to interpret instructions when they came from an adult model, but that children made rapid gains between age 3 and 3-and-a-half, at which point they were able to follow in-app audio instructions and on-screen demonstrations. The common technique of using visual state changes to prompt gestures was ineffective across this age range. Given that prior work in this space has primarily focused on childrens fine motor control, our findings point to a need for increased attention to the design of prompts that accommodate childrens cognitive development as well.

Collaborative Visual Analysis of Sentiment in Twitter Events

Researchers across many fields are increasingly using data from social media sites to address questions about individual and group social behaviors. However, the size and complexity of these data sets challenge traditional research methods; many new tools and techniques have been developed to support research in this area. In this paper, we present our experience designing and evaluating Agave, a collaborative visual analysis system for exploring events and sentiment over time in large tweet data sets. We offer findings from evaluating Agave with researchers experienced with social media data, focusing on how users interpreted sentiment labels shown in the interface and on the value of collaboration for stimulating exploratory analysis.

Traffigram: distortion for clarification via isochronal cartography

Most geographic maps visually represent physical distance; however, travel time can in some cases be more important than distance because it directly indicates availability. The technique of creating maps from temporal data is known as isochronal cartography, and is a form of distortion for clarification. In an isochronal map, congestion expands areas, while ideal travel conditions make the map shrink in comparison to the actual distance scale of a traditional map. Although there have been many applications of this technique, detailed user studies of its efficacy remain scarce, and there are conflicting views on its practical value. To attempt to settle this issue, we utilized a user-centered design process to determine which features of isochronal cartography might be most usable in practice. We developed an interactive cartographic visualization system, Traffigram, that features a novel combination of efficient isochronal map algorithms and an interface designed to give map users a quick and seamless experience while preserving geospatial integrity and aesthetics. We validated our design choices with multiple usability studies. We present our results and discuss implications for design.

Hidden symbols

Linking a symbol to the object it represents is a skill that develops gradually over the first few years of life. However, prior work shows that frequent use of this capacity makes it unintuitive for adults to recognize it as a challenge for young children. We hypothesized that this disconnect would manifest in software interfaces designed for young children, such that applications would embed symbols that the target audience would fail to understand. We conducted a randomized controlled trial with 34 preschoolers between the ages of 2 and 5 to assess their ability to work with user interface elements that require symbolic mappings. In particular, we assessed, (1) symbolic progress bars and (2) demonstrations of touch interactions by an on-screen cartoon hand. We found that these techniques are entirely inaccessible for children under 3 and that they require specific design choices to facilitate understanding in children between the ages of 3 and 5. Among a sample of 94 popular apps targeting children in this age range, we found that these symbolic techniques are incorporated into 44% of apps for preschoolers. We further found that embellishing symbolic elements with visual detail, a common practice in apps for preschoolers, increases childrens cognitive burden and is an additional barrier to performing the symbolic mappings necessary to use these interfaces. We present design alternatives that make these prevalent user interface elements accessible to this user group. Display Omitted

Designing interactive distance cartograms to support urban travelers

A distance cartogram (DC) is a technique that alters distances between a user-specified origin and the other locations in a map with respect to travel time. With DC, users can weigh the relative travel time costs between the origin and potential destinations at a glance because travel times are projected in a linearly interpolated time space from the origin. Such glance-ability is known to be useful for travelers who are mindful of travel time when finding their travel destinations. When constructing DC, however, uneven urban traffic conditions introduce excessive distortion and challenge user intuition. In addition, there has been little research focusing on DCs user interaction design. To tackle these challenges and realize the potential of DC as an interactive decision-making support tool, we derive a set of useful interactions through two formative studies and devise two novel techniques called Geo-contextual Anchoring Projection and Scalable Road-network Construction. We develop an interactive map system using these techniques and evaluate this system by comparing it against an equidistant map (EM), a widely used conventional layout that preserves the geographical reality. Based on the analysis of user behavior and qualitative feedback, we identify several benefits of using DC itself and of the interaction techniques we derived. We also analyze the specific reasons behind these identified benefits.

Lariat: A Visual Analytics Tool for Social Media Researchers to Explore Twitter Datasets

Online social data is potentially a rich source of insight into human behavior, but the sheer size of these datasets requires specialized tools to facilitate social media research. Visual analytics tools are one promising approach, but calls have been made for more in-depth studies in specific application domains to contribute to the design of such tools. We conducted a formative study to better understand the needs of social media researchers, and created Lariat, a visual analytics tool that facilitates exploratory data analysis through integrated grouping and visualization of social media data. The design of Lariat was informed by the results of the formative study and sensemaking theory, both indicating that the exploratory processes require search, comparison, verification, and iterative refinement. Based on our results and the evaluation of Lariat, we identify a number of design implications for future visual analytics tools in this domain.

Designing tools to support advanced users in new forms of social media interaction

Interface design practices in social media systems change rapidly, routinely presenting new tools and functionalities. In order to attract a broad base of users and acceptance of system enhancements, interface designs are typically highly conventional, building on best practices in HCI. In such systems, the needs of advanced users are often secondary. To probe how the design of tools should be adjusted to the needs of advanced users, we created CrediVis, a tool for visualizing multi-dimensional user data in Wikipedia. Through a two-round study of advanced users, we find that such users value specialized and complex tools designed to fit their needs. We further observed that although they value such advanced tools they prefer conventional rather than novel interface design. Our study suggests that tool design for advanced users must be closely aligned with needs that can be co-discovered with advanced users.

VIZMO Game Browser: Accessing Video Games by Visual Style and Mood

Despite the growing interests in video games as consumer products as well as objects of research, current methods for accessing video games are limited. We present Vizmo as a new way of browsing video games based on their visual style and mood. In order to test the usability and usefulness of Vizmo, we asked 19 video game experts to evaluate their interaction with the tool. The results show that experts perceived Vizmo as a novel and aesthetically pleasing game discovery tool which would be most useful for game research on historical and aesthetic aspects. We discuss five key points for improving the design of Vizmo as well as our future plan for the next iteration of this prototype game browser.

SparQs: Visual Analytics for Sparking Creativity in Social Media Exploration

Social media has become a fruitful platform on which to study human behavior and social phenomena. However, social media data are usually messy, disorganized, and noisy, which makes finding patterns in such data a challenging task. Visualization can help with the exploration of such massive data. Researchers studying social media often begin by reviewing related research. In this paper, we consider the idea that information from related research can be incorporated into social media visualization tools in order to spark creativity and guide exploration. To develop an effective overview of social media research with which to seed our tool, we conducted a content analysis of social media related papers and designed SparQs, a visual analytics tool to spark creativity in social media exploration. We conducted a pilot evaluation with three social media researchers as well as a participatory design workshop to explore further directions.

Toward the operationalization of visual metaphor

Many successful digital interfaces employ visual metaphors to convey features or data properties to users, but the characteristics that make a visual metaphor effective are not well understood. We used a theoretical conception of metaphor from cognitive linguistics to design an interactive system for viewing the citation network of the corpora of literature in the JSTOR database, a highly connected compound graph of 2 million papers linked by 8 million citations. We created 4 variants of this system, manipulating 2 distinct properties of metaphor. We conducted a between‐subjects experimental study with 80 participants to compare understanding and engagement when working with each version. We found that building on known image schemas improved response time on look‐up tasks, while contextual detail predicted increases in persistence and the number of inferences drawn from the data. Schema‐congruency combined with contextual detail produced the highest gains in comprehension. These findings provide concrete mechanisms by which designers presenting large data sets through metaphorical interfaces may improve their effectiveness and appeal with users.