Showing papers in "IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications in 2015"

Visual Computing as a Key Enabling Technology for Industrie 4.0 and Industrial Internet

Abstract: A worldwide movement in advanced manufacturing countries is seeking to reinvigorate (and revolutionize) the industrial and manufacturing core competencies with the use of the latest advances in information and communications technology. Visual computing plays an important role as the "glue factor" in complete solutions. This article positions visual computing in its intrinsic crucial role for Industrie 4.0 and provides a general, broad overview and points out specific directions and scenarios for future research.

More Than Telling a Story: Transforming Data into Visually Shared Stories

Abstract: The authors take a closer look at how the visualization community has discussed visual storytelling and present a visual data storytelling process, incorporating steps involved in finding insights (explore data), turning these insights into a narrative (make a story), and communicating this narrative to an audience (tell a story) They also discuss opportunities for future research in visualization as a storytelling medium in the light of this broader process

Reducing Visual Discomfort with HMDs Using Dynamic Depth of Field

Abstract: Although head-mounted displays (HMDs) are ideal devices for personal viewing of immersive stereoscopic content, exposure to VR applications on them results in significant discomfort for the majority of people, with symptoms including eye fatigue, headaches, nausea, and sweating A conflict between accommodation and vergence depth cues on stereoscopic displays is a significant cause of visual discomfort This article describes the results of an evaluation used to judge the effectiveness of dynamic depth-of-field (DoF) blur in an effort to reduce discomfort caused by exposure to stereoscopic content on HMDs Using a commercial game engine implementation, study participants report a reduction of visual discomfort on a simulator sickness questionnaire when DoF blurring is enabled The study participants reported a decrease in symptom severity caused by HMD exposure, indicating that dynamic DoF can effectively reduce visual discomfort

Characterizing Visualization Insights from Quantified Selfers' Personal Data Presentations

Abstract: Data visualization and analytics research has great potential to empower people to improve their lives by leveraging their own personal data. However, most quantified selfers (Q-Selfers) are neither visualization experts nor data scientists. Consequently, visualizations Q-Selfers created with their data are often not ideal for conveying insights. Aiming to design a visualization system to help nonexperts gain and communicate personal data insights, the authors conducted a predesign empirical study. Through the lens of Q-Selfers, they examined what insights people gain specifically from their personal data and how they use visualizations to communicate their insights. Based on their analysis of 30 quantified self-presentations, they characterized eight insight types (detail, self-reflection, trend, comparison, correlation, data summary, distribution, and outlier) and mapped the visual annotations used to communicate them. They further discussed four areas for the design of personal visualization systems, including support for encouraging self-reflection, gaining valid insight, communicating insight, and using visual annotations.

Analytic Provenance for Sensemaking: A Research Agenda

Abstract: Sensemaking is a process of finding meaning from information that often involves activities such as information foraging and hypothesis generation. It can be valuable to maintain a history of the data and reasoning involved. This history, commonly known as provenance information, can be a resource for "reflection-in-action"' during analysis, supporting collaboration between analysts, and can help trace data quality and uncertainty through the analysis process. Currently, there is limited work on utilizing analytic provenance, which captures the interactive data exploration and human reasoning process, to support sensemaking. This article presents and extends the research challenges discussed in a IEEE VIS 2014 workshop on this topic to provide an agenda for sensemaking analytic provenance.

Visual Perspective and Feedback Guidance for VR Free-Throw Training

Abstract: Accurate distance perception and natural interactions are mandatory conditions when training precision aiming tasks in VR. However, many factors specific to virtual environments (VEs) lead to differences in the way users execute a motor task in VR versus the real world. To investigate these differences, the authors performed a study on basketball beginners' free-throw performance in VEs under different visual conditions. Although the success rate is not statistically different, some adaptations occurred in the way the users performed the task, depending on the visual conditions. In the third-person perspective visual condition, the release parameters indicate that the users more accurately estimated distance to target. Adding visual guidance information (gradual depth information showing the ideal ball trajectory) also led to more natural motor behavior. The final aim of this study was to develop a reliable basketball free-throw training system in VEs, so the authors compared beginners' performances in VR with experts' models of performance. Their results show that most of the performance variables tended to evolve closer to the experts' performance during the training in the VE.

Shape Displays: Spatial Interaction with Dynamic Physical Form

Abstract: Shape displays are an emerging class of devices that emphasize actuation to enable rich physical interaction, complementing concepts in virtual and augmented reality. The ability to render form introduces new opportunities to touch, grasp, and manipulate dynamic physical content and tangible objects, in both nearby and remote environments. This article presents novel hardware, interaction techniques, and applications, which point to the potential for extending the ways that we traditionally interact with the physical world, empowered by digital computation.

Maximizing Smart Factory Systems by Incrementally Updating Point Clouds

Abstract: Many industry leaders have recognized the need to reinvent the way factories operate. This has led to the Industrie 4.0 and Industrial Internet initiatives, which advocate the use of cyber-physical systems to provide customers with personalized products. The authors present a data-driven approach based on the idea of a digital factory--that is, a virtual representation of production plants and processes that can facilitate virtual analysis. Specifically, the proposed tools can help decision makers assess existing assembly lines for their maximum degree of customization using up-to-date and physically accurate models of their factories. The authors achieve this by maintaining up-to-date information about a factory floor via incremental laser scanning of structural changes. They then combine this with simulation tools to compute maximum design volumes to guarantee collision-free and product-customizable production lines. They also present a case study that examines the reusability of a rust treatment facility for multiple car chassis models at Volvo.

Visual Analytics for MOOC Data

Abstract: With the rise of massive open online courses (MOOCs), tens of millions of learners can now enroll in more than 1,000 courses via MOOC platforms such as Coursera and edX. As a result, a huge amount of data has been collected. Compared with traditional education records, the data from MOOCs has much finer granularity and also contains new pieces of information. It is the first time in history that such comprehensive data related to learning behavior has become available for analysis. What roles can visual analytics play in this MOOC movement? The authors survey the current practice and argue that MOOCs provide an opportunity for visualization researchers and that visual analytics systems for MOOCs can benefit a range of end users such as course instructors, education researchers, students, university administrators, and MOOC providers.

The Reality Deck--an Immersive Gigapixel Display

Abstract: The Reality Deck is a visualization facility offering state-of-the-art aggregate resolution and immersion. Its a 1.5-Gpixel immersive tiled display with a full 360-degree horizontal field of view. Comprising 416 high-density LED-backlit LCD displays, it visualizes gigapixel-resolution data while providing 20/20 visual acuity for most of the visualization space.

A Visual-Interactive System for Prostate Cancer Cohort Analysis

Abstract: A long-term goal in prostate cancer research is a sound prognosis prior to surgery, and as a consequence, data-centered research is becoming increasingly important. Currently, it takes several days to define meaningful cohorts by manually selecting patients from health record systems and performing statistical hypothesis tests with cohorts. The authors developed an efficient and effective visual-interactive system for the definition and analysis of patient cohorts. The system provides an overview of large sets of patient records and allows medical researchers to interactively drill down to relevant patient cohorts. In addition, a guidance concept helps them identify interesting relations between defined cohorts and rich sets of attributes available in the patient records. The system increases the efficiency of the researchers' analytical workflow by reducing the temporal effort from days to minutes.

Legibility in Industrial AR: Text Style, Color Coding, and Illuminance

Abstract: In the Industrie 4.0 vision, the creation of leading-edge options for interaction between people and technology occupies a key role. In this context, augmented reality (AR) is one of the most suitable solutions. However, it is still not ready to be effectively used in industry. A crucial problem is the legibility of text seen through AR head-worn displays (HWDs). AR interface designers have no standard guidelines to follow, especially for these devices. Literature and anecdotal evidence suggest that legibility depends mainly on background, display technology (that is, see-through optical or video HWDs), and text style (for example, plain text, outline, or billboard). Furthermore, there are constraints to consider in industrial environments, such as standard color-coding practices and workplace lighting. The authors examine aspects affecting text legibility with an emphasis on deriving guidelines to support AR interface designers. Their results suggest that enhancing text contrast via software, along with using the outline or billboard style, is an effective practice to improve legibility in many situations. If one text style is needed for both types of HWD, their results suggest that colored billboards (with neutral white text) are effective. When color coding is not mandatory, white text and blue billboard are more effective than other styles tested.

A VR-Based Serious Game for Studying Emotional Regulation in Adolescents

Abstract: People all use more or less adapted strategies to confront adverse emotional situations in their lives without being psychologically affected. The emotional regulation (ER) strategies that we use determine the way in which we feel, express, and behave. Moreover, ER strategies are particularly important in adolescents, a population for which ER strategy deficits can be linked to the appearance of numerous mental health disorders, such as depression or anxiety, or disruptive behaviors. Thus, the early detection of dysfunctional ER strategies and training in adaptive ER strategies can help prevent future occurrences of possible behavioral and psychosocial disorders. In this article, the authors present the GameTeen System (GT-System), a novel instrument based on virtual reality and serious games for the assessment and training of ER strategies in adolescents. The results of their preliminary evaluation suggest that this system can effectively train and evaluate emotional regulation strategies in adolescents.

Toward Standard Usability Questionnaires for Handheld Augmented Reality

Abstract: Usability evaluations are important to improving handheld augmented reality (HAR) systems However, no standard questionnaire considers perceptual and ergonomic issues found in HAR The authors performed a systematic literature review to enumerate these issues Based on these issues, they created a HAR usability scale that consists of comprehensibility and manipulability scales These scales measure general system usability, ease of understanding the information presented, and ease of handling the device The questionnaires' validity and reliability were evaluated in four experiments, and the results show that the questionnaires consistently correlate with other subjective and objective measures of usability The questionnaires also have good reliability based on the Cronbach's alpha Researchers and professionals can directly use these questionnaires to evaluate their own HAR applications or modify them with the insights presented in this article

Semantic Interaction: Coupling Cognition and Computation through Usable Interactive Analytics

Abstract: The success of visual analytics is predicated on the ability of users to interactively explore information. Humans think about their data through interactive visual exploration, including testing hypotheses, exploring anomalies, and other cognitive processes of building understanding from data. The claim that these insights are generated as a result of the interaction led the attendees at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) workshop on "Semantic Interaction: Coupling Cognition and Computation through Usable Interactive Analytics" to posit that user interaction must play a more central role in visual analytics systems, serving as the method for coupling cognition and computation. The claims and design principles discussed in this workshop report present research directions to advance visual analytics via a user interaction approach called semantic interaction.

Design Challenges and Opportunities for Eco-Feedback in the Home

Abstract: Domestic energy conservation is critical to reducing energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions. Personal visualization has a role to play in the design of appropriate feedback for encouraging more effective home energy use, but the unique nature of residential energy informatics introduces new design issues. This article reviews current approaches and discusses unaddressed challenges related to better conceptual models, context, enhanced communicative scope, and functional aesthetics. Based on a proposed theoretical framework, the author identifies important gaps in the current design space of residential energy visualizations related to richer data models, a broader concept of context, an enhanced communicative scope, and a better ecological fit in the home.

ENTVis: A Visual Analytic Tool for Entropy-Based Network Traffic Anomaly Detection

Abstract: Entropy-based traffic metrics have received substantial attention in network traffic anomaly detection because entropy can provide fine-grained metrics of traffic distribution characteristics. However, some practical issues--such as ambiguity, lack of detailed distribution information, and a large number of false positives--affect the application of entropy-based traffic anomaly detection. In this work, we introduce a visual analytic tool called ENTVis to help users understand entropy-based traffic metrics and achieve accurate traffic anomaly detection. ENTVis provides three coordinated views and rich interactions to support a coherent visual analysis on multiple perspectives: the timeline group view for perceiving situations and finding hints of anomalies, the Radviz view for clustering similar anomalies in a period, and the matrix view for understanding traffic distributions and diagnosing anomalies in detail. Several case studies have been performed to verify the usability and effectiveness of our method. A further evaluation was conducted via expert review.

Visual Computing Challenges of Advanced Manufacturing and Industrie 4.0 [Guest editors' introduction]

Abstract: The (r)evolution in Industrie 4.0 is being accelerated by the wide adoption of networking and Internet technology into traditional industries such as manufacturing shop floors aiming at CPPS for future factories. Furthermore, advances in additive manufacturing, modeling systems, physics-based simulation, and the computational representation of materials has created a framework to enable new intelligent factories characterized by adaptability, resource efficiency, and ergonomics. This special issue serves to familiarize the computer graphics community with the Industrie 4.0 and Industrial Internet initiatives and mobilize more computer graphicists to initiate research and application development in this emerging and attractive area.

Sharpening Analytic Focus to Cope with Big Data Volume and Variety

Abstract: The growing volumes of time-stamped data available from sensors, social media sources, Web logs, and medical histories present remarkable opportunities for researchers and policy analysts. Although big data resources can provide valuable insights to help us understand complex systems and lead to better decisions for business, national security, cybersecurity, and healthcare, there are many challenges to dealing with the volume and variety of data. Data cleaning and data wrangling has received some attention with the development of application tools, but data focusing to sharpen the analytic focus remains a challenge. To address this challenge, this article provides a taxonomy of analytic focusing strategies for temporal event sequences.

Visual Analytics for Early-Phase Complex Engineered System Design Support

Abstract: The design and production of complex engineered systems (CES) requires analysis of massive amounts of detailed information, including data on products and materials, engineering designs, manufacturing specifications, supply chain and delivery data, and changing customer needs. Visual analytics promises to offer tools and methods that will help stakeholders interactively explore, discover, and make sense of the underlying data. This article reports on the authors' ongoing experiences in developing visual analytics tools for real-world CES. Their work focuses on the early design phase during which a large design space is explored, poor alternatives are pruned, and valuable alternatives are further considered. The authors demonstrate their ideas with an example of a 2-degrees-of-freedom robot and conclude with opportunities for future work for visualization in manufacturing design.

WordlePlus: Expanding Wordle's Use through Natural Interaction and Animation

Abstract: Wordle has been commonly used to summarize texts, with each word size-coded by its frequency of occurrences--the more often a word occurs in texts, the bigger it is. The interactive authoring tool WordlePlus leverages natural interaction and animation to give users more control over wordle development. WordlePlus supports direct manipulation of words with pen and touch interaction. It introduces two-word multitouch manipulation, such as concatenating and grouping two words, and provides pen interaction for adding and deleting words. In addition, WordlePlus employs animation to help users create more dynamic and engaging wordles.

Key-Node-Separated Graph Clustering and Layouts for Human Relationship Graph Visualization

Abstract: Many graph-drawing methods apply node-clustering techniques based on the density of edges to find tightly connected subgraphs and then hierarchically visualize the clustered graphs. However, users may want to focus on important nodes and their connections to groups of other nodes for some applications. For this purpose, it is effective to separately visualize the key nodes detected based on adjacency and attributes of the nodes. This article presents a graph visualization technique for attribute-embedded graphs that applies a graph-clustering algorithm that accounts for the combination of connections and attributes. The graph clustering step divides the nodes according to the commonality of connected nodes and similarity of feature value vectors. It then calculates the distances between arbitrary pairs of clusters according to the number of connecting edges and the similarity of feature value vectors and finally places the clusters based on the distances. Consequently, the technique separates important nodes that have connections to multiple large clusters and improves the visibility of such nodes' connections. To test this technique, this article presents examples with human relationship graph datasets, including a coauthorship and Twitter communication network dataset.

Design and Effects of Personal Visualizations

Abstract: In an effort to determine what elements need to be considered when designing personal visualizations, this research study explores how users react to different personal visualization designs. The authors present three distinct personal visualization designs (Timeline, Spark, and Bouquet) for visualizing Facebook user data. In a scenario-based user study, they interview participants to evaluation each design's utility, exploring the visualization of the users' own data, comparing two personal visualizations, and analyzing a series of personal visualizations. The analysis of the recorded conversations suggests that the illustrative design was the most well-balanced with respect to relaying information, motivating data exploration, and providing personal insights to the users. The authors believe this study will help guide future developers regarding the design of personal visualizations.

Visualizing Personal Progress in Participatory Sports Cycling Events

Abstract: This article explores the potential for creating personal visualization of participation in sports cycling as a design study. Examples show riders' personal narratives and performances relative to other participants in long-distance cycling events. Minimalist cartographic design is applied during the automatic generation of profile maps, which allows personal textual narratives to be attached to visualizations of 3D variations in terrain. Changes in relative position and time-in-hand data during mass participation events are shown as position charts, and animations of rider density over time are used to visualize the progress of larger groups of riders in an event. The designs focus on representing the aspects of participation that evoke an emotional response in an effort to engage users.

Understanding Digital Note-Taking Practice for Visualization

Abstract: As digital notebooks become common forms of external memory, keeping track of these volumes of content is also becoming increasingly difficult. Information visualization tools can provide note-takers with an overview of their content and allow them to explore diverse sets of notes, find and organize related content, and compare their notes with collaborators. To ground the design of such tools, the authors conducted a detailed mixed-methods study of digital note-taking practice. They identify a variety of editing, organization, and sharing methods used by digital note-takers, many of which result in notes becoming "lost in the pile." These findings form the basis for the authors' design considerations that examine how visualization can support the revisitation, organization, and sharing of digital notes.

Gestalt Principles in Multimodal Data Representation

Abstract: Data visualization is a powerful tool to communicate data in a clear, digestible format through graphical means. To be effective, however, form and function need to work in tandem, filtering layers of noise to reveal the key aspects of the analyzed data. Indeed, this could prove to be sufficient in discovering already known patterns. Still, the search for undiscovered patterns would require the full dataset to be presented as a whole, which bears the risk of sensory overload. Human sensory systems function as a systemic unit in relation to one another, dynamically sampling the signals around us to give a concise scene analysis. To decipher a complex, multidimensional dataset, a representational system that is able to reproduce the layers of information through different stimulations would be required. This article explores the possibilities of using multimodal data representation as a method to communicate multidimensional data, guided by the principles of Gestalt psychology. Point Cloud, an artwork that implements such explorations through the visualization and sonification of lightning data is presented as an application of this research. The Web extra can be found at http://youtu.be/pQtxsvgv80E.

The Wearable Revolution

Abstract: Recent advances in smaller, lower-powered processors are fueling both the next generation of fitness products as well as imaginative, fashionable, and entertaining new applications of wearable computing. Wearable devices may truly take off in 2015. This article features some of the latest advances and applications in computer graphics technology.

Sensing Thumb-to-Finger Taps for Symbolic Input in VR/AR Environments

Abstract: Thumb-to-finger tap interaction can be employed to perform eyes-free, discrete, symbolic input in virtual and augmented reality environments The DigiTap device is worn on the wrist to keep the hand free from any instrumentation so as not to impair tactile sense and dexterity DigiTap senses the jerk that is caused by a tap and takes an image sequence to detect the tap location The device can recognize taps at 12 different locations on the fingers, and at some positions, it can even distinguish between different tap strengths The authors conducted an extended user study to evaluate users' abilities to interact with the device and perform symbolic input

Eye Tracking for Personal Visual Analytics

Abstract: In many research fields, eye tracking has become an established method to analyze the distribution of visual attention in various scenarios. In the near future, eye tracking is expected to become ubiquitous, recording massive amounts of data in everyday situations. To make use of this data, new approaches for personal visual analytics will be necessary to make the data accessible, allowing nonexpert users to re-experience interesting events and benefit from self-reflection. This article discusses how eye tracking fits in the context of personal visual analytics, the challenges that arise with its application to everyday situations, and the research perspectives of personal eye tracking. As an example, the authors present a technique for representing areas of interest (AOIs) from multiple videos: the AOI cloud. They apply this technique to examine a user's personal encounters with other people.

A "Design First" Approach to Visualization Innovation

Abstract: The design-first approach focuses on the initial design of a visualization without the overhead of data and system requirements. Two case studies that used this technique show how a nontechnical approach can be successful at eliciting thought-provoking visualization solutions without the need for sample data.