|
John H. Flowers :
"Should we listen to our data?
The promise of sonification as alternative or supplement to data
visualization techniques"
While it has not yet gained widespread
acceptance, the representation of quantitative data through sound is a
promising new tool for scientific discovery, education, and communication that
is potentially available to nearly anyone with a personal computing device. As
is true with the development of computer visualization techniques, the
production of effective auditory display technology will require tight
collaboration between experts in computer and software technology and
cognitive scientists familiar with the properties and limitations of human
attention and perception. Dr.
Flowers’ presentation will present examples of recent research on the
auditory representation of statistical properties of relatively “simple”
numeric data sets, as well as sonification of more complex multivariate time
series data such as climate records. His presentation will also outline some
avenues of future research on facilitating human decisions concerning complex
data and development of assistive technology for blind and visually impaired
individuals.
Brad
Myers: "Mobile Devices for Control"
With today's wireless technologies, such as
BlueTooth and IEEE 802.11, connecting handheld computers and conventional
computers together are becoming no longer an occasional event for
synchronization. Instead, the devices are frequently in close, interactive
communication. Many environments, such as offices, meeting rooms and
classrooms, already contain computers, and the smart homes of the future will
have ubiquitous embedded computation. Household and office appliances will
soon have wireless communication abilities. When the user enters one of these
environments carrying a handheld or wearable computer, how will that computer
interact with the environment? The Pebbles project is exploring the many ways
that small handheld Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) such as PalmOS devices
or Pocket PC / Windows CE devices can serve as a useful adjunct to the
"fixed" computers in those situations. For meetings, our
applications allow the presenter to use a PDA to have better control of
presentations, and allow the audience to actively participate with their own
PDAs. For the office, other Pebbles applications allow the PDA to be used as
an extra input and output device. For the home, we are exploring the use of
the PDA as a customizable, intelligent "personal universal
controller" (PUC) for appliances. For classrooms, we are investigating
how the students' handhelds can enhance testing and notetaking when they are
connected to the instructor's PC. For the disabled, we are investigating how
PDAs can serve as assistive devices for access to computers and appliances.
This talk will provide an overview of our Pebbles project, including a live
demonstration of our systems (available for download from our web site) and a
discussion of future plans.
For more information, see
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pebbles/
Gennady Andrienko:
"Spatio-temporal information visualisation" The importance of exploratory data analysis
(EDA) as a prerequisite to application of computational methods, such as traditional statistical analysis, is currently widely
recognized. The goal of EDA is to gain understanding of data, i.e. to penetrate into relationships, patterns, and trends hidden inside data and to formulate hypotheses that can later be checked using statistical methods. Preliminary investigation of
data must also precede their preparation to processing by various computation-based analysis tools, such as data mining.
Techniques of EDA are mostly based on data visualization, i.e. the graphical presentation of data in ways that prompt the discovery of important traits and relationships. Computers enabled features of
graphical presentations that are now considered indispensable for EDA: high user interactivity, allowance for various transformations, and multiple dynamically linked views such that changes in one display are
immediately propagated to all others. An important category of data dealt with in statistics is spatially referenced data. For visualization of such data, maps are traditionally used, since they are isomorphic to
space and thus capable of representing and conveying to human’s eye significant spatial relationships. High degree of user interactivity is a general requirement to map displays intended to support “spatial
thinking”, i.e. hypothesis generation, data analysis, and decision making. Examples of possible user interactions include:
Still, interactive techniques and tools can support information exploration and knowledge construction only when users are able to properly
utilize these instruments. User studies demonstrate that effective use of the novel techniques requires learning of the new concepts and ideas. Users are able to understand and adopt the new ideas concerning map interactivity and manipulability. However, these ideas needed to
be appropriately introduced; people could not grasp them just from the appearance of the maps and controls.
Our Spatial Decision Support Team (SPADE) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Autonomous Intelligent Systems designs and implements novel
visualization techniques to support exploratory data analysis and decision making in a spatial context. In particular, we have
analyzed traditional methods of graphical and cartographical data representation, revealed their strong and weak sides, and found ways to enhance
their strengths and compensate for weaknesses by adding interactivity and dynamics. We combine cartographic
visualization with other methods of graphical data representation and data analysis methods
from other disciplines, such as statistics and data mining. To support multi-criteria decision making, we combine established techniques for multi-criteria decision support with interactive maps and graphs and
invent our own methods, highly interactive and visual. We suggest a range of techniques for decision support accommodating various styles of decision-making.
The general topic of the proposed tutorial is visualization of spatial data as a tool for exploratory data analysis, problem solving, and decision-making. The tutorial will be based on the CommonGIS system
developed by the SPADE team. The system is available for free use for research and educational purposes. The participants will receive CD-ROMs containing fully functional CommonGIS system and a
variety of demonstration projects.
Most of the tools considered in the tutorial are unique for CommonGIS since this system have been specially designed for the most efficient support of EDA and decision-making. However, the experience
gained in the tutorial can be also utilised in work with commercially available software. In many cases, operations that are effectively “packed” in CommonGIS into a single tool may be done in other packages
through sequences of data transformation, calculation, and visualization operations. Some recommendations concerning data exploration and decision making with the use of available commercial software will
be given.
The tutorial will be held in 1.5 hours and consists of a lecture combined with demonstration.
A collection of slides is available at
http://www.commongis.com/tutorial/tutorial-ppt.zip
Michael
Eisenberg: "Mindstuff:
Educational Technology Beyond the Computer"
Educational computing has a (partially
deserved) reputation of "virtualizing" children's lives--of
distancing children from experience with the physical world. This talk, in
contrast, will describe a variety of novel
ways in which computational media can be combined with all sorts of physical
materials to enhance the practice of both traditional and non-traditional
educational crafts. The talk will describe a variety of projects in our Craft
Technologies Group at the University of Colorado. In these projects, we
attempt to design educationally rich activities that blend together new types
of computational media, output devices, and physical stuff.
|
