Search

We provide comprehensive knowledge of the noticeability of visual emphasis effects in a wide variety of visualization conditions

Many visualizations display large datasets in which it can be difficult for users to find (and re-find) specific items. In systems that provide highlighting tools (e.g., filtering or brushing), emphasized points can become "accidental landmarks" - visual anchors that help users remember locations that are near the emphasized points. Accidental landmarks could be useful (by aiding revisitation), but if users become dependent on them, removing or changing the highlighting could cause problems. We provide designers with information about these issues through two crowdsourced studies in which people learned a set of item locations (in visualizations with or without emphasized points); we then removed or changed the highlighting to see if performance suffered. In the first study, which used a simple grid of points, results showed that changing or removing emphasized points significantly impeded users' ability to re-find targets, but the highlighting did not improve performance during training. In the second study, which used a more complex scatterplot, we found that highlighting significantly improved performance during training, but that removing or changing the emphasis points only reduced refinding performance for a few target types. Our work demonstrates that visualization designers need to consider how transient visual effects such as emphasis can affect spatial learning and revisitation, and provides new knowledge about how visual features can affect performance.

While evidence supports that some commercial off-the-shelf video games may promote mental wellbeing, it is an extensive time investment to experimentally identify games that benefit players. The time delay between commercial games research and commercial game development can render such research out-of-date. In this work, we explore player-written game reviews as a way to expeditiously identifying games with potential benefits for mental wellbeing. Through a content analysis of review data, we found that players publicly disclose experiences consistent with self-care. Our analysis generated categories related to coping and recovery, emotional regulation, social connectedness, and obsessive play. Through this process, we identified several games as strong candidates for further research. Our work contributes to an emerging research agenda of commercial video games as therapy (VGTx), by providing a technique for rapidly identifying games with therapeutic potential. Further, we demonstrate that Steam user reviews are a valuable source of affective player experience data-a contribution with broad implications for player experience research.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ivi-10.1177_14738716211045354 for Which emphasis technique to use? Perception of emphasis techniques with varying distractors, backgrounds, and visualization types by Aristides Mairena, Carl Gutwin and Andy Cockburn in Information Visualization

Contour plots are widely used in geospatial data visualization as they provide natural interpretation of information across spatial scales. To compare a geospatial attribute against others, contour plots for the base attribute (e.g., elevation) are often overlaid, blended, or examined side by side with other attributes (e.g., temperature or pressure). Such visual inspection is challenging since overlay and color blending both clutter the visualization, and a side-by-side arrangement requires users to mentally integrate the information from different plots. Therefore, these approaches become less efficient as the number of attributes grows. In this paper we examine the fundamental question of whether the base contour lines, which are already present in the map space, can be leveraged to visualize how other attributes relate to the base attribute. We present five different designs for stylizing contour lines, and investigate their interpretability using three crowdsourced studies. Our first two studies examined how contour width and number of contour intervals affect interpretability, using synthetic datasets where we controlled the underlying data distribution. We then compared the designs in a third study that used both synthetic and real-world meteorological data. Our studies show the effectiveness of stylizing contour lines to enrich the understanding of how different attributes relate to the reference contour plot, reveal trade-offs among design parameters, and provide designers with important insights into the factors that influence interpretability.

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ivi-10.1177_14738716211045354 for Which emphasis technique to use? Perception of emphasis techniques with varying distractors, backgrounds, and visualization types by Aristides Mairena, Carl Gutwin and Andy Cockburn in Information Visualization

Advances in genomics have expeditedthe improvement of several agriculturally important crops but similar efforts in wheat (Triticum spp.) have been more challenging. This is largely owing to the size and complexity of the wheat genome1, and the lack of genome-assembly data for multiple wheat lines2,3. Here we generated ten chromosome pseudomolecule and five scaffold assemblies of hexaploid wheat to explore the genomic diversity among wheat lines from global breeding programs. Comparative analysis revealed extensive structural rearrangements, introgressions from wild relatives and differences in gene content resulting from complex breeding histories aimed at improving adaptation to diverse environments, grain yield and quality, and resistance to stresses4,5. We provide examples outlining the utility of these genomes, including a detailed multi-genome-derived nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat protein repertoire involved in disease resistance and the characterization of Sm16, a gene associated with insect resistance. These genome assemblies will provide a basis for functional gene discovery and breeding to deliver the next generation of modern wheat cultivars.

Finding and revisiting objects in visual content collections is common in many analytics tasks. For large collections, filters are often used to reduce the number of items shown, but many systems generate a new ordering of the items for every filter update - and these changes make it difficult for users to remember the locations of important items. An alternative is to show the entire dataset in a spatially-stable layout, and show filter results with highlighting. The spatial approach has been shown to work well with small datasets, but little is known about how spatial memory scales to tasks with hundreds of items. To investigate the scalability of spatial presentations, we carried out a study comparing finding and re-finding performance with two data organizations: pages of items that re-generate item ordering with each filter change, and a spatially-stable organization that presents all 700 items at once. We found that although overall times were similar, the spatial interface was faster for revisitation, and participants used fewer filters than in the paged interface as they gained familiarity with the data. Our results add to previous work by showing that spatial interfaces can work well with datasets of hundreds of items, and that they better support a transition to fast revisitation using spatial memory.

Learnability is important in graphical interfaces because it supports the user's transition to expertise. One aspect of GUI learnability is the degree to which the icons in toolbars and ribbons are identifiable and memorable - but current "flat" and "subtle" designs that promote strong visual consistency could hinder learning by reducing visual distinctiveness within a set of icons. There is little known, however, about the effects of visual distinctiveness of icons on selection performance and memorability. To address this gap, we carried out two studies using several icon sets with different degrees of visual distinctiveness, and compared how quickly people could learn and retrieve the icons. Our first study found no evidence that increasing colour or shape distinctiveness improved learning, but found that icons with concrete imagery were easier to learn. Our second study found similar results: there was no effect of increasing either colour or shape distinctiveness, but there was again a clear improvement for icons with recognizable imagery. Our results show that visual characteristics appear to affect UI learnability much less than the meaning of the icons' representations.

Comparative analysis in genomics involves comparing two or more genomes to identify conserved genetic information. These duplicated regions can indicate shared ancestry and can shed light on an organism's internal functions and evolutionary history. Due to rapid advances in sequencing technology, high-resolution genome data is now available for a wide range of species, and comparative analysis of this data can provide insights that can be applied in medicine, plant breeding, and many other areas. Comparative genomics is a strongly interactive task, and visualizing the location, size, and orientation of conserved regions can assist researchers by supporting critical activities of interpretation and judgment. However, visualization tools for the analysis of conserved regions have not kept pace with the increasing availability of genomic information and the new ways in which this data is being used by biological researchers. To address this gap, we gathered requirements for interactive exploration from three groups of expert genomic scientists, and developed a web-based tool called SynVisio with novel interaction techniques and visual representations to meet those needs. Our tool supports multi-resolution analysis, provides interactive filtering as researchers move deeper into the genome, supports revisitation to specific interface configurations, and enables loosely-coupled collaboration over the genomic data. An evaluation of the system with five researchers from three expert groups provides evidence about the success of our system's novel techniques for supporting interactive exploration of genomic conservation.

International audience; Touch interactions with current mobile devices have limited expressiveness. Augmenting devices with additional degrees of freedom can add power to the interaction, and several augmentations have been proposed and tested. However, there is still little known about the effects of learning multiple sets of augmented interactions that are mapped to different applications. To better understand whether multiple command mappings can interfere with one another, or affect transfer and retention, we developed a prototype with three pushbuttons on a smartphone case that can be used to provide augmented input to the system. The buttons can be chorded to provide seven possible shortcuts or transient mode switches. We mapped these buttons to three different sets of actions, and carried out a study to see if multiple mappings affect learning and performance, transfer, and retention. Our results show that all of the mappings were quickly learned and there was no reduction in performance with multiple mappings. Transfer to a more realistic task was successful, although with a slight reduction in accuracy. Retention after one week was initially poor, but expert performance was quickly restored. Our work provides new information about the design and use of chorded buttons for augmenting input in mobile interactions.

Advances in genomics have expedited the improvement of several agriculturally important crops but similar efforts in wheat (Triticum spp.) have been more challenging. This is largely owing to the size and complexity of the wheat genome1, and the lack of genome-assembly data for multiple wheat lines2,3. Here we generated ten chromosome pseudomolecule and five scaffold assemblies of hexaploid wheat to explore the genomic diversity among wheat lines from global breeding programs. Comparative analysis revealed extensive structural rearrangements, introgressions from wild relatives and differences in gene content resulting from complex breeding histories aimed at improving adaptation to diverse environments, grain yield and quality, and resistance to stresses4,5. We provide examples outlining the utility of these genomes, including a detailed multi-genome-derived nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat protein repertoire involved in disease resistance and the characterization of Sm16, a gene associated with insect resistance. These genome assemblies will provide a basis for functional gene discovery and breeding to deliver the next generation of modern wheat cultivars., Nature, 588 (7837), ISSN:0028-0836, ISSN:1476-4687

Emphasis effects - visual changes that make certain elements more prominent - are commonly used in information visualization to draw the user's attention or to indicate importance. Although theoretical frameworks of emphasis exist (that link visually diverse emphasis effects through the idea of visual prominence compared to background elements), most metrics for predicting how emphasis effects will be perceived by users come from abstract models of human vision which may not apply to visualization design. In particular, it is difficult for designers to know, when designing a visualization, how different emphasis effects will compare and how to ensure that the user's experience with one effect will be similar to that with another. To address this gap, we carried out two studies that provide empirical evidence about how users perceive different emphasis effects, using three visual variables (colour, size, and blur/focus) and eight strength levels. Results from gaze tracking, mouse clicks, and subjective responses in our first study show that there are significant differences between different kinds of effects and between levels. Our second study tested the effects in realistic visualizations taken from the MASSVIS dataset, and saw similar results. We developed a simple predictive model from the data in our first study, and used it to predict the results in the second; the model was accurate, with high correlations between predictions and real values. Our studies and empirical models provide new information for designers who want to understand how emphasis effects will be perceived by users.

National audience; Expert interaction techniques such as gestures or hotkeys are more efficient than traditional WIMP techniques because it is often faster to recall a command than to navigate to it. However, many users seem to be reluctant to switch to expert interaction. We hypothesize the cause might be the aversion of making errors. To test this, we designed two intermediate modes for the FastTap interaction technique, allowing quick confirmation of what the user has retrieved from memory, and quick adjustment if she has made an error. We investigated the impact of these modes and of various error costs in a controlled study (N=36). We found that participants adopted the intermediate modes, that these modes reduced error rate when error cost was high, and that they did not substantially change selection times. However, while it validates the design of our intermediate modes, we found no evidence of greater switch to memory-based interaction, suggesting that reducing the error rate is not sufficient to promote expert use of techniques.; Les techniques d'interaction expertes comme les vocabulaires gestuels ou les raccourcis clavier sont plus efficaces que les techniques WIMP traditionnelles. Il est en effet plus rapide de se rappeler une commande plutôt que de la retrouver dans des menus. Cependant, la plupart des utilisateurs semblent réticents à passer aux interactions qui se basent sur leur mémoire. Nous pensons que la cause pourrait être due à leur aversion à faire des erreurs. Pour tester cette hypothèse, nous avons conçu deux modes intermédiaires pour la technique d'interaction FastTap, qui permet de rapidement confirmer ce que l'utilisateur s'est rappelé de mémoire, et d'ajuster si une erreur a été faite. Nous avons étudié l'impact de ces deux modes intermédiaires et de différents coûts d'erreur dans une étude contrôlée (N=36). Nous avons trouvé que les participants ont adopté les modes intermédiaires, que ces modes réduisaient le taux d'erreur quand le coût de l'erreur était important, et qu'ils n'ont pas affecté de manière significative les temps de sélection. Cependant, bien que les résultats valident la conception de nos modes intermédiaires, nous n'avons pas trouvé de preuve sur un plus grand passage aux interactions qui se basent sur la mémoire. Cela suggère que réduire le taux d'erreur n'est pas suffisant pour promouvoir l'utilisation experte des techniques.

Full-coverage displays can place visual content anywhere on the interior surfaces of a room (e.g., a weather display near the coat stand). In these settings, digital artefacts can be located behind the user and out of their field of view - meaning that it can be difficult to notify the user when these artefacts need attention. Although much research has been carried out on notification, little is known about how best to direct people to the necessary location in room environments. We designed five diverse attention-guiding techniques for full-coverage display rooms, and evaluated them in a study where participants completed search tasks guided by the different techniques. Our study provides new results about notification in full-coverage displays: we showed benefits of persistent visualisations that could be followed all the way to the target and that indicate distance-to-target. Our findings provide useful information for improving the usability of interactive full-coverage environments. Postprint Postprint

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2019, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 28 - 31 May 2019, A 2019 CHCCS Achievement Award from the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society is presented to Dr. Carl Gutwin for his many contributions to the field of humancomputer interaction (HCI) research. We especially note his impactful work on groupware such as inter-personal awareness and the mechanics of collaboration. His work spans the breadth of HCI from very technical systems papers, to inventing new interaction techniques, to exploring the application of social theory to technology design and to his extensive care and rigor in evaluative methods. CHCCS invites a publication by the award winner to be included in the proceedings, and this year we continue the tradition of an interview format rather than a formal paper. This permits a casual discussion of the research areas, insights, and contributions of the award winner. What follows are the edited responses from Carl Gutwin to questions posed by Sheelagh Carpendale that took place during March 2019.

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2016, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, 1-3 June 2016, 49-56, People frequently form small groups in many social and professional situations: from conference attendees meeting at a coffee break, to siblings gathering at a family barbecue. These ad-hoc gatherings typically form into predictable geometries based on circles or circular arcs (called F-Formations). Because our lives are increasingly stored and represented by data on handheld devices, the desire to be able to share digital objects while in these groupings has increased. Using the relative position in these groups to facilitate file sharing can enable intuitive techniques such as passing or flicking. However, there is no reliable, lightweight, ad-hoc technology for detecting and representing relative locations around a circle. In this paper, we present two systems that can auto-order locations about a circle based on sensors that are standard on commodity smartphones. We tested these systems using an object-passing task in a laboratory environment against unordered and proximity-based systems, and show that our techniques are faster, are more accurate, and are preferred by users.

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2015, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Canada, 3 - 5 June 2015, 223-231, Rehearsal-based interfaces such as Marking Menus or FastTap are designed to enable smooth transitions from novice to expert performance by making the novice's visually-guided actions a physical rehearsal of the expert's feedback-free actions. However, these interfaces have not been extensively tested in real use. We carried out studies of the adoption of rehearsal-based expert methods in two dissimilar applications -- a game that directly rewards rapid selections, and a drawing program that has no particular need for urgency. Results showed very different patterns of use for the guidance-free expert method. In the game, participants quickly switched to sustained use of expert selections, whereas few users regularly used the expert method in the drawing program, even after ten weeks and more than 1800 selections. These studies show that rehearsal alone does not guarantee that users will switch to expert methods, and that additional factors affect users' decisions about what methods to use. Our studies also revealed several issues that should be considered by designers of rehearsal-based techniques -- such as perceived risk in making selections without visual guidance, the value of guidance that shows possible options in the UI, and training that reminds users of an expert method and motivates its use.

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2015, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Canada, 3 - 5 June 2015, 131-138, Mixed-focus collaboration occurs when people work on individual tasks in a shared space -- and although their tasks may not be directly linked, they still need to maintain awareness and manage access to shared resources. This kind of collaboration is common on tables, where people often use the same space to carry out work that is only loosely coupled. At physical tables, people easily manage to coordinate access to the table surface and the artifacts on it, because people have years of experience interacting around other physical bodies. At distributed digital tabletops, however, where there is no physical body for the remote person, many of the natural cues used to manage mixed-focus collaboration are missing. To compensate, distributed groupware often uses digital embodiments. On digital touch tables, however, we know little about how these embodiments affect coordination and awareness. We carried out an empirical study of how four factors in an arm embodiment (transparency, input technique, visual fidelity, and tactile feedback) affected implicit coordination, awareness, and co-presence. We found that although some embodiments affected subjective feelings of co-presence or awareness, there were no changes in table behavior -- people acted as if the other person did not exist. These findings show the possibilities and limitations of digital arm embodiments, and suggest that the natural advantages of tables for collaboration may not extend to distributed tables.

Shared-workspace groupware has not become common in the workplace, despite many positive results from research labs. One reason for this lack of success is that most shared workspace systems are designed around the idea of planned, formal collaboration sessions — yet much of the collaboration that occurs in a co-located work group is informal and opportunistic. To support informal collaboration, groupware must be designed and built differently. We introduce the idea of community-based groupware (CBG), in which groupware is organized around groups of people working independently, rather than shared applications, documents, or virtual places. Community-based groupware provides support for three things that are fundamental to informal collaboration: awareness of others and their individual work, lightweight means for initiating interactions, and the ability to move into closely-coupled collaboration when necessary. We demonstrate three prototypes that illustrate the ideas behind CBG, and argue that this way of organizing groupware supports informal collaboration better than other existing approaches.

Home care workers are mobile, work out of different locations, and have a high level of uncertainty in their schedules. This makes communication and information sharing difficult, and workers are often unable to account for others' activities when planning their own treatments. To address this issue, we developed and evaluated a clinical information system for home care that supports current paperwork practices and stores documents in a central repository that is accessible by all workers that treat a patient.

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2003, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Canada, 11 - 13 June 2003, 237-246, Modal analysis provides a powerful tool for efficiently simulating the behavior of deformable objects. This paper shows how manipulation, collision, and other constraints may be implemented easily within a modal framework. Results are presented for several example simulations. These results demonstrate that for many applications the errors introduced by linearization are acceptable, and that the resulting simulations are fast and stable even for complex objects and stiff materials.

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2003, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, Canada, 11 - 13 June 2003, 47-56, With large volume data sets, it can be difficult to visualize the data all at once. Multiple views can address this problem by displaying details in areas of interest while still keeping track of the global overview. Many "detail and context" techniques exist for volume data, but it is unclear when to use each one. We introduce a new class of methods called ExoVis, an alternative that balances trade-offs of existing techniques. We then heuristically compare ExoVis to existing methods to provide insight into when each technique is appropriate.

Proceedings of Graphics Interface 2002, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Canada, 27 - 29 May 2002, 43-50, Virtual embodiments of people in groupware systems provide a wealth of information to others in the group. They allow for explicit gestural communication, and they provide implicit awareness information about people's locations and activities. However, the constraints of current networked groupware limit the effectiveness of these kinds of communication. This paper investigates how embodiments can be augmented with traces - visualizations of past movements - to help others perceive and interpret bodily communication more clearly and more accurately. The paper presents a case study of traces applied to telepointers, and gives several examples of how the concept can be used to improve interaction effectiveness in groupware.

Proceedings of the 1996 Conference on Graphics Interface, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 22 - 24 May 1996, 28-38, Desktop conferencing systems are now shifting from strict view-sharing towards relaxed what-you-see-is-what-I-see" interfaces, where distributed participants in a real time session can view different parts of a shared visual workspace. As with strict view-sharing, people using relaxed-WYSIWIS require a sense of workspace awareness-the up-to-the-minute knowledge about another person's interactions with the shared workspace. The problem is deciding how to provide a user with an appropriate level of awareness of what other participants are doing when they are working in different areas of the workspace. In this paper, we summarize requirements for workspace awareness, identify limitations of existing groupware solutions, and propose as a replacement fisheye views that show both global context and local detail within a single window. Within groupware, these displays provide: a) peripheral awareness of other participants by showing their position and actions in the global context; b) detailed awareness of interactions by assigning multiple focal points for each participant, and by magnifying the areas where they are working. Two groupware prototypes illustrate these concepts: a fisheye graph browser, and a fisheye text viewer."

Many factors influence a user’s visual perception of an interface (e.g. culture gender visual impairment). In general interface researchers and designers have considered these factors in isolation without considering the combined effect of every factor influencing the visual perception of the user. As a result interfaces have been optimized for single factors (e.g. improving accessibility for individuals with low vision) at the expense of optimizing for the individual’s visual perception experience (e.g. considering cultural preferences and lighting conditions while assisting users with low vision). In this workshop we will begin the process of combining the broad range of visual perception knowledge to create a holistic approach to understanding users’ visual perception. The resulting knowledge pool will be used for generating interfaces better suited to the full range of users’ visual perception abilities.

Colours are an important part of user experiences on the Web. Colour schemes influence the aesthetics first impressions and long term engagement with websites. However five percent of people perceive a subset of all colours because they have colour vision deficiency (CVD) resulting in an unequal and less rich user experience on the Web. Traditionally people with CVD have been supported by recolouring tools that im prove colour differentiability but do not consider the subjec tive properties of colour schemes while recolouring. To ad dress this we developed SPRWeb a tool that recolours web sites to preserve subjective responses and improve colour dif ferentiability – thus enabling users with CVD to have similar online experiences. To develop SPRWeb we extended exist ing models of non CVD subjective responses to CVD then used this extended model to steer the recolouring process. In a lab study we found that SPRWeb did significantly better than a standard recolouring tool at preserving the temperature and naturalness of websites while achieving similar weight and differentiability preservation. We also found that recolouring did not preserve activity and hypothesize that visual com plexity influences activity more than colour. SPRWeb is the first tool to automatically preserve the subjective and percep tual properties of website colour schemes thereby equalizing the colour based web experience for people with CVD.

In this article we describe people’s online contribution practices in contexts in which the government actively blocks access to or censors the Internet. We argue that people experience blocking as confusing, as a motivation for self-censorship online, as a cause of impoverishment of available content and as a real threat of personal persecution. Challenging ideas of blocking as a monolithic, abstract policy, we discuss five strategies with which Internet users navigate blocking: self-censorship, cultivating technical savvy, reliance on social ties to relay blocked content, use of already blocked sites for content production as a form of protection and practiced transparency. We also discuss strategies that forum owners and blogging platform providers employ to deal with and to avoid blocking. We conclude by advocating for more research that acknowledges the complexity of the contexts in which all Internet users contribute to the Internet and social media.

In this paper we introduce and discuss the nature of free-play in the context of three open-ended interactive art installation works. We observe the interaction work of situated free-play of the participants in these environments and, building on precedent work, devise a set of sensitising terms derived both from the literature and from what we observe from participants interacting there. These sensitising terms act as guides and are designed to be used by those who experience, evaluate or report on open-ended interactive art. That is, we propose these terms as a common-ground language to be used by participants communicating while in the art work to describe their experience, by researchers in the various stages of research process (observation, coding activity, analysis, reporting, and publication), and by inter-disciplinary researchers working across the fields of HCI and art. This work builds a foundation for understanding the relationship between free-play, open-ended environments, and interactive installations and contributes sensitising terms useful for the HCI community for discussion and analysis of open-ended interactive art works.

An advantage of physical interfaces over graphical widgets is that they bring controls closer to hand. VoodooSketch is a system that supports dynamic customisation of tabletop interfaces with physical controls that users can arrange on palettes. The system employs pen and paper techniques to achieve two novel capabilities: first, users are able to sketch controls that are immediately operational for pen interaction; second, users can label the controls with a handwritten name that identifies their function and binds the control to an application. This paper presents the results of an empirical evaluation of the VoodooSketch interface customisation techniques. The main findings of the study are: that users are able to easily create sketched controls; that they can use them as effectively as traditional input devices; that handwritten labelling is more efficient for control mapping than conventional screen-based methods; and that the sketched controls improve user performance and reduce error rates. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

VoodooSketch is a system that extends interactive surfaces with physical interface palettes on which users can dynamically deploy controls as shortcut to application functionality. The system provides physical 'plug and play' controls as well as support for sketching of controls, and allows controls to be associated with application functions via handwritten labels. The system uses a special digital pen, which writes 'real' ink on the palettes while functioning as a digital input device on the interactive surfaces. The palettes can be seamlessly integrated into existing applications, be appropriated by the user to suit different input requirements, and support new interaction styles across multiple surfaces, palettes and users. Refereed/Peer-reviewed