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The standard definition for “physicalizations” is “a physical artifact whose geometry or material properties encode data” [ 47 ]. While this working definition provides the fundamental groundwork for conceptualizing physicalization, in practice many physicalization systems go beyond the scope of this definition as they consist of distributed physical and digital elements that involve complex interaction mechanisms. In this article, we examine how “physicalization” is part of a broader ecology—the “physecology”—with properties that go beyond the scope of the working definition. Through analyzing 60 representative physicalization papers, we derived six design dimensions of a physecology: (i) represented data type, (ii) way of information communication, (iii) interaction mechanisms, (iv) spatial input–output coupling, (v) physical setup, and (vi) audiences involved. Our contribution is the extension of the definition of physicalization to the broader concept of “physecology,” to provide conceptual clarity on the design of physicalizations for future work.

Self-monitoring devices are becoming increasingly popular in the support of physical activity experiences. These devices mostly represent on-screen data using numbers and graphs and in doing so, they may miss multi-sensorial methods for engaging with data. Embracing the opportunity for pleasurable interactions with one's own data through the use of different materials and digital fabrication technology, we designed and studied three systems that turn this data into 3D-printed plastic artifacts, sports drinks, and 3D-printed chocolate treats. We utilize the insights gained from associated studies, related literature, and our experiences in designing these systems to develop a conceptual framework, “ Shelfie. ” The “ Shelfie ” framework has 13 cards that convey key themes for creating material representations of physical activity data. Through this framework, we present a conceptual understanding of relationships between material representation and physical activity data and contribute guidelines to the design of meaningful material representations of physical activity data.

Composite data physicalizations allow for the physical reconfiguration of data points, creating new opportunities for interaction and engagement. However, there is a lack of understanding of people’s strategies and behaviors when directly manipulating physical data objects. In this paper, we systematically characterize different reconfiguration strategies using six exemplar physicalizations. We asked 20 participants to reorganize these exemplars with two levels of restriction: changing a single data object versus changing multiple data objects. Our findings show that there were two main reconfiguration strategies used: changes in proximity and changes in atomic orientation. We further characterize these using concrete examples of participant actions in relation to the structure of the physicalizations. We contribute an overview of reconfiguration strategies, which informs the design of future manually reconfigurable and dynamic composite physicalizations.

The present research makes an attempt to design and develop an automated hand shovel (AHS) as a hand attachment that assists in mud removal during gardening and thereby increases efficiency of the task and reduces hand-arm strain. A four-bar mechanism with a slider-revolute joint powered by a high torque DC motor has been designed for this purpose. Proper experimentations had been conducted to trace the actual path/trajectory of hand movement for 06 healthy participants during shovelling mechanism by three-dimensional motion-tracking cameras. The device is designed to imitate the motion curve followed during actual shovelling operation. The tool end is modified to ensure minimum resistance to the mechanism during piercing. The structure of AHS aligns the handwrist-arm posture and provides sufficient support to the human arm during operation. A conceptual and functional prototype has been fabricated for physical visualization and to assess the feasibility of the design. The proposed device is helpful for a gardener/user to perform gardening task with increased efficiency and higher comfort at handwrist arm. The proposed AHS can be further modified to serve multiple gardening operations.

We demonstrate PVD, a system that visualization designers can use to co-design the interface and system architecture of scalable and expressive visualization.

As physicalizations encode data in their physical 3D form, the orientation in which the user is viewing the physicalization may impact the way the information is perceived. However, this relation between user orientation and perception of physical properties is not well understood or studied. To investigate this relation, we conducted an experimental study with 20 participants who viewed 6 exemplars of physicalizations from 4 different perspectives. Our findings show that perception is directly influenced by user orientation as it affects (i) the number and type of clusters, (ii) anomalies and (iii) extreme values identified within a physicalization. Our results highlight the complexity and variability of the relation between user orientation and perception of physicalizations.

This article introduces Rolling Pixels, that are essentially robotic Steinmetz solids, for constructing frame-by-frame physical animations. As a bicylinder-shaped Rolling Pixel rolls back and forth or left and right, the shape and color of the top view of the pixel changes repeatedly without using any additional shape- or color-changing techniques. Implemented using off-the-shelf products and technologies, Rolling Pixels are easy-to-build, reproducible, and customizable kinetic design material. We describe the design and implementation of the current prototype of Rolling Pixels. We also illustrate the potential of the Rolling Pixels as building blocks for physical animations through a set of simulated examples.

Studying networking technologies have become one of the most important subjects in the field of technology in junior high schools and information study of senior high schools in Japan. A problem with studying networking technologies is that there are few intuitive educational equipment for these studies. In addition, network systems have become an infrastructure of society. It is difficult for students to imagine network systems and technologies because they cannot see how networks work. The new educational equipment of a network router for network construction based on the concepts of physical visualizations and physical direct manipulations has been developed. The equipment can visualize how networks work using a Full Color Serial LED tape. Additionally, the equipment provides function of physical direct manipulation using dials and buttons. The experiments were conducted using the equipment and confirmed that the equipment works effectively for network learning.

Providing data visualization authoring tools for the general public remains an ongoing challenge. Inspired by block-printing, we explore how visualization stamps as a physical visualization authoring tool could leverage both visual freedom and ease of repetition. We conducted a workshop with two groups---visualization experts and non-experts---where participants authored visualizations on paper using hand-carved stamps made from potatoes and sponges. The low-fidelity medium freed participants to test new stamp patterns and accept mistakes. From the created visualizations, we observed several unique traits and uses of block-printing tools for visualization authoring, including: modularity of patterns, annotation guides, creation of multiple patterns from one stamp, and various techniques to apply data onto paper. We discuss the issues around expressivity and effectiveness of block-printed stamps in visualization authoring, and identify implications for the design and assembly of primitives in potential visualization stamp kits, as well as applications for future use in non-digital environments.

International audience; Physical data representations, or data physicalizations, are a promising new medium to represent and communicate data. Previous work mostly studied passive physicalizations which require humans to perform all interactions manually. Dynamic shape-changing displays address this limitation and facilitate data exploration tasks such as sorting, navigating in data sets which exceed the fixed size of a given physical display, or preparing “views” to communicate insights about data. However, it is currently unclear how people approach and interact with such data representations. We ran an exploratory study to investigate how non-experts made use of a dynamic physical bar chart for an open-ended data exploration and presentation task. We asked 16 participants to explore a data set on European values and to prepare a short presentation of their insights using a physical display. We analyze: (1) users' body movements to understand how they approach and react to the physicalization, (2) their hand-gestures to understand how they interact with physical data, (3) system interactions to understand which subsets of the data they explored and which features they used in the process, and (4) strategies used to explore the data and present observations. We discuss the implications of our findings for the use of dynamic data physicalizations and avenues for future work.

Physical visualizations, or data physicalizations, encode data in attributes of physical shapes. Despite a considerable body of work on visual variables, "physical variables" remain poorly understood. One of them is physical size. A difficulty for solid elements is that "size" is ambiguous - it can refer to either length/diameter, surface, or volume. Thus, it is unclear for designers of physicalizations how to effectively encode quantities in physical size. To investigate, we ran an experiment where participants estimated ratios between quantities represented by solid bars and spheres. Our results suggest that solid bars are compared based on their length, consistent with previous findings for 2D and 3D bars on flat media. But for spheres, participants' estimates are rather proportional to their surface. Depending on the estimation method used, judgments are rather consistent across participants, thus the use of perceptually-optimized size scales seems possible. We conclude by discussing implications for the design of data physicalizations and the need for more empirical studies on physical variables.

We investigated how a physical artifact could support seamless interaction with personal activity data in everyday life. We introduce LOOP (Figure 1), a physical artifact that changes its shape according to the activity data of the owner, providing an abstract visualization. This paper reports on the design process of LOOP that was informed by interviews and co-creation sessions with end users. We conclude with future work on the evaluation of the concept. This paper makes two main contributions. Firstly, LOOP is proposed as an example of an alternative approach to physically represent activity data. Secondly, the design process and rationale behind LOOP are presented as design knowledge.

Analytic representations of coherent-wave polarization draw from well-known physics in this subject as applied to electromagnetic problems, and especially antennas. However, the physical visualization, bases, and their interrelationships are frequently from disparate sources. The increasing use of multi-function phased arrays highlights other topics of concern, since the changing directions of steered beams results in dynamic changes in polarization that must be dealt with. Following basic visualization in terms of circular basis components, the circular-to-linear basis-transform matrices are derived. Since similarities or interactions among different polarizations are concerned, the physical and analytic utility of the Poincare sphere is reviewed. Geometric effects inherently basic to all phased array problems are demonstrated and analyzed in connection with polarization control. Cross-polarization interpretation and association with pattern measurements are described.

In the area of wellness and health, people are currently logging and monitoring an increasing amount of information of their everyday lives. The visualization of the logged data is currently typically presented in a mobile phone app. Here, we present our ongoing research on physical visualizations of sleep data, monitored with a wearable sensor. Our aim is to create tangible artifacts where the data has been integrated to the design in an aesthetic way, and hence provide information appliances that people can reflect upon.

Sports fans are increasingly using social media platforms like Twitter to express emotions and share their opinions while watching sports on TV. These commentaries describe a intense subjective experience of a fan watching a sport passionately. We see an opportunity to attend to these nostalgic moments by capturing them into a physical form. We present, Fantibles, personalized sports memorabilia that highlights an individual's commentary about sports on Twitter along with the uniqueness of each sports match. As a first case study, we investigate Fantibles for one popular sport, Cricket. We report insights from field deployments of Fantibles during an ODI Cricket match series between India and Bangladesh and offer reflections on the design in the form of four themes: self-expression, layered sense making, ad-hoc interactions and distributed social interactions. We believe our work opens up new interaction possibilities to support social sports viewing experience and design thinking on creating personalized sports memorabilia.

This paper reintroduces pen plotting to interaction and visualization design through the project of HeartPlotter. The HeartPlotter collects the user’s heartbeat data, maps the data into the pen movements, then presents the real-time variations in heart rate through its mechanical movements and sounds, and finally delivers the overall HRV information in a compact form as one drawing on paper. In this pilot study, we experimented with three basic mappings between data and visualizations by controlling the pen movement in speed, path and pen-down timing. The results show that the pen’s speed could present changing heart rate data in real-time and the pen’s path mainly affects the data visualization and the aesthetic of the plotted drawings. Finally, we discuss the possibility and limitations of the pen plotter used in information display and interaction design

This paper reintroduces pen plotting to interaction and visualization design through the project of HeartPlotter. The HeartPlotter collects the user’s heartbeat data, maps the data into the pen movements, then presents the real-time variations in heart rate through its mechanical movements and sounds, and finally delivers the overall HRV information in a compact form as one drawing on paper. In this pilot study, we experimented with three basic mappings between data and visualizations by controlling the pen movement in speed, path and pen-down timing. The results show that the pen’s speed could present changing heart rate data in real-time and the pen’s path mainly affects the data visualization and the aesthetic of the plotted drawings. Finally, we discuss the possibility and limitations of the pen plotter used in information display and interaction design

Internet of things (IoT) devices and sensor kits have the po-tential to democratize the access, use, and appropriation of data. Despite the increased availability of low cost sensors, most of the produced data is 'black box' in nature: users of-ten do not know how to access or interpret data. We propose a 'human-data design' approach in which end-users are given tools to create, share, and use data through tangible and phys-ical visualizations. This paper introduces Physikit, a system designed to allow users to explore and engage with environ-mental data through physical ambient visualizations. We re-port on the design and implementation of Physikit, and pre-sent a two-week field study which showed that participants got an increased sense of the meaning of data, embellished and appropriated the basic visualizations to make them blend into their homes, and used the visualizations as a probe for community engagement and social behavior.

The work deals with an application of the 3D-printing to full-size building the reachable sets in control problems. As an example, a simple car model is considered with nonlinear dynamics, three-dimensional phase vector, and scalar control constrained by modulus (Dubins car). Current state of the sytem includes its position in the plane and the velocity heading. The velocity value is given to be constant. The reachable sets are considered “at the terminal instant” and “till the terminal instant”. These sets are nonconvex and their boundaries are not smooth in the whole. Peculiarities of the sets can be better comprehenced being represented in the form of three-dimensional bodies that are built with using the 3D-printing. The sets’ boundaries are presented in the VRML and STL formats. Examples of computation and visualization are given including their 3D-printed copies. Problems are discussed that appear under the 3D-constructing of surfaces with complicated forms.

International audience; Physical representations of data have existed for thousands of years. Yet it is now that advances in digital fabrication, actuated tangible interfaces, and shape-changing displays are spurring an emerging area of research that we call Data Physicalization. It aims to help people explore, understand, and communicate data using computer-supported physical data representations. We call these representations physicalizations, analogously to visualizations – their purely visual counterpart. In this article, we go beyond the focused research questions addressed so far by delineating the research area, synthesizing its open challenges, and laying out a research agenda.

The goal of an external representation of abstract data is to provide insights and convey information about the structure of the underlying data, therefore helping people execute tasks and solve problems more effectively. Apart from the popular and well-studied digital visualization of abstract data there are other scarcely studied perceptual channels to represent data such as taste, sound or haptic. My thesis focuses on the latter and explores in which ways human knowledge and ability to sense and interact with the physical non-digital world can be used to enhance the way in which people analyze and explore abstract data. Emerging technological progress in digital fabrication allow an easy, fast and inexpensive production of physical objects. Machines such as laser cutters and 3D printers enable an accurate fabrication of physical visualizations with different form factors as well as materials. This creates, for the first time, the opportunity to study the potential of physical visualizations in a broad range. The thesis starts with the description of six prototypes of physical visualizations from static examples to digitally augmented variations to interactive artifacts. Based on these explorations, three promising areas of potential for physical visualizations were identified and investigated in more detail: perception & memorability, communication & collaboration, and motivation & self-reflection. The results of two studies in the area of information recall showed that participants who used a physical bar chart retained more information compared to the digital counterpart. Particularly facts about maximum and minimum values were be remembered more efficiently, when they were perceived from a physical visualization. Two explorative studies dealt with the potential of physical visualizations regarding communication and collaboration. The observations revealed the importance on the design and aesthetic of physical visualizations and indicated a great potential for their utilization by audiences with less interest in technology. The results also exposed the current limitations of physical visualizations, especially in contrast to their well-researched digital counterparts. In the area of motivation we present the design and evaluation of the Activity Sculptures project. We conducted a field study, in which we investigated physical visualizations of personal running activity. It was discovered that these sculptures generated curiosity and experimentation regarding the personal running behavior as well as evoked social dynamics such as discussions and competition. Based on the findings of the aforementioned studies this thesis concludes with two theoretical contributions on the design and potential of physical visualizations. On the one hand, it proposes a conceptual framework for material representations of personal data by describing a production and consumption lens. The goal is to encourage artists and designers working in the field of personal informatics to harness the interactive capabilities afforded by digital fabrication and the potential of material representations. On the other hand we give a first classification and performance rating of physical variables including 14 dimensions grouped into four categories. This complements the undertaking of providing researchers and designers with guidance and inspiration to uncover alternative strategies for representing data physically and building effective physical visualizations., Um aus abstrakten Daten konkrete Aussagen, komplexe Zusammenhänge oder überraschende Einsichten gewinnen zu können, müssen diese oftmals in eine, für den Menschen, anschauliche Form gebracht werden. Eine weitverbreitete und gut erforschte Möglichkeiten ist die Darstellung von Daten in visueller Form. Weniger erforschte Varianten sind das Verkörpern von Daten durch Geräusche, Gerüche oder physisch ertastbare Objekte und Formen. Diese Arbeit konzentriert sich auf die letztgenannte Variante und untersucht wie die menschlichen Fähigkeiten mit der physischenWelt zu interagieren dafür genutzt werden können, das Analysieren und Explorieren von Daten zu unterstützen. Der technische Fortschritt in der digitalen Fertigung vereinfacht und beschleunigt die Produktion von physischen Objekten und reduziert dabei deren Kosten. Lasercutter und 3D Drucker ermöglichen beispielsweise eine maßgerechte Fertigung physischer Visualisierungen verschiedenster Ausprägungen hinsichtlich Größe und Material. Dadurch ergibt sich zum ersten Mal die Gelegenheit, das Potenzial von physischen Visualisierungen in größerem Umfang zu erforschen. Der erste Teil der Arbeit skizziert insgesamt sechs Prototypen physischer Visualisierungen, wobei sowohl statische Beispiele beschrieben werden, als auch Exemplare die durch digital Inhalte erweitert werden oder dynamisch auf Interaktionen reagieren können. Basierend auf den Untersuchungen dieser Prototypen wurden drei vielversprechende Bereiche für das Potenzial physischer Visualisierungen ermittelt und genauer untersucht: Wahrnehmung & Einprägsamkeit, Kommunikation & Zusammenarbeit sowie Motivation & Selbstreflexion. Die Ergebnisse zweier Studien zur Wahrnehmung und Einprägsamkeit von Informationen zeigten, dass sich Teilnehmer mit einem physischen Balkendiagramm an deutlich mehr Informationen erinnern konnten, als Teilnehmer, die eine digitale Visualisierung nutzten. Insbesondere Fakten über Maximal- und Minimalwerte konnten besser im Gedächtnis behalten werden, wenn diese mit Hilfe einer physischen Visualisierung wahrgenommen wurden. Zwei explorative Studien untersuchten das Potenzial von physischen Visualisierungen im Bereich der Kommunikation mit Informationen sowie der Zusammenarbeit. Die Ergebnisse legten einerseits offen wie wichtig ein ausgereiftes Design und die Ästhetik von physischen Visualisierungen ist, deuteten anderseits aber auch darauf hin, dass Menschen mit geringem Interesse an neuen Technologien eine interessante Zielgruppe darstellen. Die Studien offenbarten allerdings auch die derzeitigen Grenzen von physischen Visualisierungen, insbesondere im Vergleich zu ihren gut erforschten digitalen Pendants. Im Bereich der Motivation und Selbstreflexion präsentieren wir die Entwicklung und Auswertung des Projekts Activity Sculptures. In einer Feldstudie über drei Wochen erforschten wir physische Visualisierungen, die persönliche Laufdaten repräsentieren. Unsere Beobachtungen und die Aussagen der Teilnehmer ließen darauf schließen, dass die Skulpturen Neugierde weckten und zum Experimentieren mit dem eigenen Laufverhalten einluden. Zudem konnten soziale Dynamiken entdeckt werden, die beispielsweise durch Diskussion aber auch Wettbewerbsgedanken zum Ausdruck kamen. Basierend auf den gewonnen Erkenntnissen durch die erwähnten Studien schließt diese Arbeit mit zwei theoretischen Beiträgen, hinsichtlich des Designs und des Potenzials von physischen Visualisierungen, ab. Zuerst wird ein konzeptionelles Framework vorgestellt, welches die Möglichkeiten und den Nutzen physischer Visualisierungen von persönlichen Daten veranschaulicht. Für Designer und Künstler kann dies zudem als Inspirationsquelle dienen, wie das Potenzial neuer Technologien, wie der digitalen Fabrikation, zur Darstellung persönlicher Daten in physischer Form genutzt werden kann. Des Weiteren wird eine initiale Klassifizierung von physischen Variablen vorgeschlagen mit insgesamt 14 Dimensionen, welche in vier Kategorien gruppiert sind. Damit vervollständigen wir unser Ziel, Forschern und Designern Inspiration und Orientierung zu bieten, um neuartige und effektvolle physische Visualisierungen zu erschaffen.

Following the success of the first SenCity workshop at UbiComp 2013, which focused on urban sensing technologies, the SenCity 2 workshop will focus on visualizing collected data in new ways. Specifically we will focus on physical forms of data visualizations using various mediums and actuation to explore how sensed data could be presented back to urban citizens in engaging and experiential ways. Participants will collaboratively apply practical research and creative flair at this hands-on workshop to design and prototype physical visualizations, bringing to life the hidden pulse of Osaka.

International audience; The accessibility of infovis authoring tools to a wide audience has been identified as one of the major research challenges. A key task of the authoring process is the development of visual mappings. While the infovis community has long been deeply interested in finding effective visual mappings, comparatively little attention has been placed on how people construct visual mappings. In this paper we present the results of a study designed to shed light on how people spontaneously transform data into visual representations. We asked people to create, update and explain their own information visualizations using simple materials such as tangible building blocks. We learned that all participants, most of whom had no experience in visualization, were readily able to create and talk about their own visualizations. On the basis of our observations, we discuss the actions of our participants in the context of the development of their visual representations and their analytic activities. From this we suggest implications for tool design that can enable broader support for infovis authoring.

This paper presents a Master seminar in which students explore the “smart city” concepts in order to develop an architectural design activity. We would like to enhance the city monitoring to allow a speculative activity that could support a design process. Thus we propose the informational continuum apprehension, from the data collection to its materialization. Then we search to increase the students’ creativity by stimulating a creative interpretation, by training the students’ abilities to capture and analyze singularities. In the last section, we present the exercise and its three main steps: the data collection, the information processing and digital representation, its transcription in an analog mock-up., Notre article retrace l’expérience d’un séminaire de Master qui cherche à explorer les possibles applications du concept de « ville intelligente » à une activité de conception architecturale. Nous souhaitons identifier des modalities qui permettraient de dépasser les enjeux du monitoring de la ville pour autoriser des activités spéculatives, support à une démarche de projet. Ainsi nous proposons un exercice qui vise l’appréhension d’un continuum informationnel qui va de la collecte de données à leurs matérialisations dans un objet intermédiaire de conception. D’autre part, nous cherchons à exercer l’activité de conception de l’étudiant en développant ses capacités d’interprétation créative, ses facultés à capturer et analyser des singularités pour développer une démarche de projet. Nous présentons le déroulement de l’exercice et ses trois principales étapes : collecte des données, traitement et représentation numérique des informations, transcription analogique et matérialisation.

International audience; Physical visualizations come in increasingly diverse forms, and are used in domains including art and entertainment, business analytics, and scientific research. However, creating physical visualizations requires laborious craftsmanship and demands expertise in both data visualization and digital fabrication. We present three case studies that illustrate limitations of current visualization fabrication workflows. We then present MakerVis, a prototype tool that integrates the entire process of creating physical visualizations, from data filtering to physical fabrication. Design sessions with three end users demonstrate how tools such as MakerVis can dramatically lower the barriers to producing physical visualizations. Observations and interviews from these sessions highlighted future research areas, including customization support, using material properties to represent data variables, and allowing the reuse of physical data objects in new visualizations.

Visualizations in the most general sense of external, physical representations of information are older than the invention of writing. Generally, external representations promote external cognition and visual thinking, and humans developed a rich set of skills for crafting and exploring them. Computers immensely increased the amount of data we can collect and process as well as diversified the ways we can represent it visually. Computer-supported visualization systems, studied in the field of information visualization (infovis), have become powerful and complex, and sophisticated interaction techniques are now necessary to control them. With the widening of technological possibilities beyond classic desktop settings, new opportunities have emerged. Not only display surfaces of arbitrary shapes and sizes can be used to show richer visualizations, but also new input technologies can be used to manipulate them. For example, tangible user interfaces are an emerging input technology that capitalizes on humans' abilities to manipulate physical objects. However, these technologies have been barely studied in the field of information visualization. A first problem is a poorly defined terminology. In this dissertation, I define and explore the conceptual space of embodiment for information visualization. For visualizations, embodiment refers to the level of congruence between the visual elements of the visualization and their physical shape. This concept subsumes previously introduced concepts such as tangibility and physicality. For example, tangible computing aims to represent virtual objects through a physical form but the form is not necessarily congruent with the virtual object. A second problem is the scarcity of convincing applications of tangible user interfaces for infovis purposes. In information visualization, standard computer displays and input devices are still widespread and considered as most effective. Both of these provide however opportunities for embodiment: input devices can be specialized and adapted so that their physical shape reflects their functionality within the system; computer displays can be substituted by transformable shape changing displays or, eventually, by programmable matter which can take any physical shape imaginable. Research on such shape-changing interfaces has so far been technology-driven while the utility of such interfaces for information visualization remained unexploited. In this thesis, I suggest embodiment as a design principle for infovis purposes, I demonstrate and validate the efficiency and usability of both embodied visualization controls and embodied visualization displays through three controlled user experiments. I then present a conceptual interaction model and visual notation system that facilitates the description, comparison and criticism of various types of visualization systems and illustrate it through case studies of currently existing point solutions. Finally, to aid the creation of physical visualizations, I present a software tool that supports users in building their own visualizations. The tool is suitable for users new to both visualization and digital fabrication, and can help to increase users' awareness of and interest in data in their everyday live. In summary, this thesis contributes to the understanding of the value of emerging physical representations for information visualization.; Les visualisations, dans le sens général de représentations externes et physiques de données, sont plus anciennes que l'invention de l'écriture. De manière générale, les représentations externes encouragent la cognition et la pensée visuelle, et nous avons développé des savoir-faire pour les créer et les exploiter. La révolution informatique a augmenté la quantité de données qu'il est possible de collecter et de traiter, et a diversifié les façons de les représenter visuellement. Les systèmes de visualisation assistés par ordinateur, et étudiés dans le domaine de la visualisation d'information, sont aujourd'hui si puissants et complexes que nous avons besoin de techniques d'interaction très sophistiqués. Grâce au développement des possibilités technologiques au-delà des ordinateurs de bureau, un large éventail d'utilisations émerge. Non seulement des surfaces d'affichage de formes et de tailles variées permettent de montrer des visualisations plus riches, mais aussi des dispositifs d'entrée de nouvelle génération peuvent être utilisés qui exploitent les aptitudes humaines à manipuler les objets physiques. Cependant, ces technologies sont peu étudiées dans le contexte de la visualisation d'information. Tout d'abord, un premier problème découle d'une terminologie insuffisante. Dans cette thèse, je définis et étudie entre autres le concept de corporalisation (embodiment) pour la visualisation d'information. Concernant les visualisations, la corporalisation réfère à la congruence entre les éléments visuels d'une visualisation et leurs formes physiques. Ce concept intègre des concepts déjà connus tels que la tangibilité. Par exemple, l'interaction tangible s'attache à la représentation d'objets virtuels par des objets physiques. Mais en réalité, leur forme physique n'est pas nécessairement congruente avec l'objet virtuel. Un second problème découle du peu d'exemples convaincants d'interfaces tangibles appliquées à la visualisation d'information. Dans le domaine de la visualisation d'information, les écrans standard et les dispositifs d'entrée génériques tels que la souris, sont toujours les plus courants et considérés comme les plus efficaces. Cependant, aussi bien la partie affichage que la partie contrôle fournit des possibilités de corporalisation : les dispositifs d'entrée peuvent être spécialisés et adaptés de façon à ce que leur forme physique ressemble à leur fonction; les écrans peuvent être rendus déformables ou, dans l'avenir, être composés d'une matière programmable capable de prendre n'importe quelle forme imaginable. Mais la recherche sur les écrans et matières déformables est pour l'instant principalement dirigée par l'innovation technologique sans tenir compte des applications possibles à la visualisation d'information. Dans cette thèse, j'propose la corporalisation comme principe de conception pour la visualisation d'information. Je démontre l'efficacité et l'utilisabilité des dispositifs d'entrée corporalisés ainsi que des affichages corporalisés, en présentant trois expériences contrôlées. Par la suite, je présente un modèle d'interaction conceptuel et un système de notation visuelle pour décrire, comparer et critiquer différents types de systèmes de visualisation, et j'illustre l'utilisation de ce modèle à partir d'études de cas. Enfin, je présente un outil de conception pour aider à la création de visualisations physiques. Cet outil s'adresse à des utilisateurs novices en visualisation d'information et en fabrication numérique, et peut contribuer à sensibiliser ces utilisateurs à l'intérêt d'explorer des données qui les concernent dans leur vie quotidienne. En résumé, cette thèse contribue à la compréhension de la valeur ajoutée des interfaces physiques pour la visualisation d'information.

In our current society, open data streams are more and more available through the Internet. This data can have an increasing impact on everyday life. Its full potential can, however, only reached through better integration and new interfaces. The goal of this project is to explore the possibilities of repurposing public information in a developing area of a large city in the Netherlands. Can we create a tangible interaction with use of physical visualization of these data streams? A series of prototypes have been made to develop a physical visualization through the method of research through design. Users were involved in expert panels and interviews to fine-tune and create a final prototype, Connect-S. The concept shows the opportunities of using physical visualization in connection with physical interaction for browsing and navigation.

In our current society, open data streams are more and more available through the Internet. This data can have an increasing impact on everyday life. Its full potential can, however, only reached through better integration and new interfaces. The goal of this project is to explore the possibilities of repurposing public information in a developing area of a large city in the Netherlands. Can we create a tangible interaction with use of physical visualization of these data streams? A series of prototypes have been made to develop a physical visualization through the method of research through design. Users were involved in expert panels and interviews to fine-tune and create a final prototype, Connect-S. The concept shows the opportunities of using physical visualization in connection with physical interaction for browsing and navigation.

In this paper we focus on universal human values as defined by Schwartz [Schw92] in the context of visualizing personal health data. Can data visualizations convey human values? We have explored various modalities of presenting health data and found that personal health visualizations indeed can convey values. This is currently work in progress, an initial step towards value-based design in the area of data visualization of personal health data.

In this paper we focus on universal human values as defined by Schwartz [Schw92] in the context of visualizing personal health data. Can data visualizations convey human values? We have explored various modalities of presenting health data and found that personal health visualizations indeed can convey values. This is currently work in progress, an initial step towards value-based design in the area of data visualization of personal health data.

In our current society, open data streams are more and more available through the Internet. This data can have an increasing impact on everyday life. Its full potential can, however, only reached through better integration and new interfaces. The goal of this project is to explore the possibilities of repurposing public information in a developing area of a large city in the Netherlands. Can we create a tangible interaction with use of physical visualization of these data streams? A series of prototypes have been made to develop a physical visualization through the method of research through design. Users were involved in expert panels and interviews to fine-tune and create a final prototype, Connect-S. The concept shows the opportunities of using physical visualization in connection with physical interaction for browsing and navigation.

International audience; We present an interaction model for beyond-desktop visualizations that combines the visualization reference model with the instrumental interaction paradigm. Beyond-desktop visualizations involve a wide range of emerging technologies such as wall- sized displays, 3D and shape-changing displays, touch and tangible input, and physical information visualizations. While these technologies allow for new forms of interaction, they are often studied in isolation. New conceptual models are needed to build a coherent picture of what has been done and what is possible. We describe a modified pipeline model where raw data is processed into a visualization and then rendered into the physical world. Users can explore or change data by directly manipulating visualizations or through the use of instruments. Interactions can also take place in the physical world outside the visualization system, such as when using locomotion to inspect a large scale visualization. Through case studies we illustrate how this model can be used to describe both conventional and unconventional interactive visualization systems, and compare different design alternatives.

How to solve the recipe-based systematic problems of the control process and production management is one of the technical difficulties of the system shortest path planning (SSPP). The control recipe modeling method is proposed based on recipe engineering for the physical visualization experiment process of SSPP, and some control recipes are implementation in this paper. The result shows that the proposed modeling method can meet the requirement of the experiment process, and is applied successfully to the physical visualization experiment process.

International audience; Data sculptures are an increasingly popular form of physical visualization whose purposes are essentially artistic, communicative or educational. But can physical visualizations help carry out actual information visualization tasks? We present the first infovis study comparing physical to on-screen visualizations. We focus on 3D visualizations, as these are common among physical visualizations but known to be problematic on computers. Taking 3D bar charts as an example, we show that moving visualizations to the physical world can improve users' efficiency at information retrieval tasks. In contrast, augmenting on-screen visualizations with stereoscopic rendering alone or with prop-based manipulation was of limited help. The efficiency of physical visualizations seems to stem from features that are unique to physical objects, such as their ability to be touched and their perfect visual realism. These findings provide empirical motivation for current research on fast digital fabrication and self-reconfiguring interfaces.