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To Classify is to Interpret
(2023)
Taxonomy building is a task that requires interpreting and classifying data within a given frame of reference, which comes to play in many areas of application that deal with knowledge and information organization. In this paper, we explore how taxonomy building can be supported with systems that integrate machine learning (ML). However, relying only on black-boxed ML-based systems to automate taxonomy building would sideline the users’ expertise. We propose an approach that allows the user to iteratively take into account multiple model’s outputs as part of their sensemaking process. We implemented our approach in two real-world use cases. The work is positioned in the context of HCI research that investigates the design of ML-based systems with an emphasis on enabling human-AI collaboration.
This paper presents Emosaic, a tool for visualizing the emotional tone of text documents, considering multiple dimensions of emotion and varying levels of semantic granularity. Emosaic is grounded in psychological research on the relationship between language, affect, and color perception. We capitalize on an established three-dimensional model of human emotion: valence (good, nice vs. bad, awful), arousal (calm, passive vs. exciting, active) and dominance (weak, controlled vs. strong, in control). Previously, multi-dimensional models of emotion have been used rarely in visualizations of textual data, due to the perceptual challenges involved. Furthermore, until recently most text visualizations remained at a high level, precluding closer engagement with the deep semantic content of the text. Informed by empirical studies, we introduce a color mapping that translates any point in three-dimensional affective space into a unique color. Emosaic uses affective dictionaries of words annotated with the three emotional parameters of the valence-arousal-dominance model to extract emotional meanings from texts and then assigns to them corresponding color parameters of the hue-saturation-brightness color space. This approach of mapping emotion to color is aimed at helping readers to more easily grasp the emotional tone of the text. Several features of Emosaic allow readers to interactively explore the affective content of the text in more detail; e.g., in aggregated form as histograms, in sequential form following the order of text, and in detail embedded into the text display itself. Interaction techniques have been included to allow for filtering and navigating of text and visualizations.
Theoretical and Empirical Modeling of Identity and Sentiments in Collaborative Groups (THEMIS.COG) was an interdisciplinary research collaboration of computer scientists and social scientists from the University of Waterloo (Canada), Potsdam University of Applied Sciences (Germany), and Dartmouth College (USA). This white paper summarizes the results of our research at the end of the grant term. Funded by the Trans-Atlantic Platform’s Digging Into Data initiative, the project aimed at theoretical and empirical modeling of identity and sentiments in collaborative groups. Understanding the social forces behind self-organized collaboration is important because technological and social innovations are increasingly generated through informal, distributed processes of collaboration, rather than in formal organizational hierarchies or through market forces. Our work used a data-driven approach to explore the social psychological mechanisms that motivate such collaborations and determine their success or failure. We focused on the example of GitHub, the world’s current largest digital platform for open, collaborative software development. In contrast to most, purely inductive contemporary approaches leveraging computational techniques for social science, THEMIS.COG followed a deductive, theory-driven approach. We capitalized on affect control theory, a mathematically formalized theory of symbolic interaction originated by sociologist David R. Heise and further advanced in previous work by some of the THEMIS.COG collaborators, among others. Affect control theory states that people control their social behaviours by intuitively attempting to verify culturally shared feelings about identities, social roles, and behaviour settings. From this principle, implemented in computational simulation models, precise predictions about group dynamics can be derived. It was the goal of THEMIS.COG to adapt and apply this approach to study the GitHub collaboration ecosystem through a symbolic interactionist lens. The project contributed substantially to the novel endeavor of theory development in social science based on large amounts of naturally occurring digital data.
The five editions of the CheckThat! lab so far have focused on the main tasks of the information verification pipeline: check-worthiness, evidence retrieval and pairing, and verification. The 2023 edition of the lab zooms into some of the problems and - for the first time - it offers five tasks in seven languages (Arabic, Dutch, English, German, Italian, Spanish, and Turkish): Task 1 asks to determine whether an item, text or a text plus an image, is check-worthy; Task 2 requires to assess whether a text snippet is subjective or not; Task 3 looks for estimating the political bias of a document or a news outlet; Task 4 requires to determine the level of factuality of a document or a news outlet; and Task 5 is about identifying authorities that should be trusted to verify a contended claim.
Journalism has become more data-driven and inherently visual in recent years. Photographs, illustrations, infographics, data visualizations, and general images help convey complex topics to a wide audience. The way that visual artifacts influence how readers form an opinion beyond the text is an important issue to research, but there are few works about this topic. In this context, we research the persuasive, emotional and memorable dimensions of data visualizations and illustrations in journalistic storytelling for long-form articles. We conducted a user study and compared the effects which data visualizations and illustrations have on changing attitude towards a presented topic. While visual representations are usually studied along one dimension, in this experimental study, we explore the effects on readers' attitudes along three: persuasion, emotion, and information retention. By comparing different versions of the same article, we observe how attitudes differ based on the visual stimuli present, and how they are perceived when combined. Results indicate that the narrative using only data visualization elicits a stronger emotional impact than illustration-only visual support, as well as a significant change in the initial attitude about the topic. Our findings contribute to a growing body of literature on how visual artifacts may be used to inform and influence public opinion and debate. We present ideas for future work to generalize the results beyond the domain studied, the water crisis.
This article investigates data journalism epistemology through Michel Foucault’s definition of power. The growing demand for data-savvy reporters with computational skills has been proven to shift the newsrooms’ culture in media companies across the globe. Previous research has documented journalists’ shift towards a data-centred epistemology and the increasingly important role of computation and data-driven practices in newsrooms. By focusing on inexperienced journalists as they mobilise data journalism for the first time, this research openly discusses its epistemology as a form of Foucauldian power: which epistemological tensions – individual or structural – emerge among newcomers when reporting extensively with data? The article presents the case of a newly formed data journalism team at taz, a German cooperative media company. It is based on qualitative data collected through action research, namely six in-depth interviews, auto-ethnographic notes and self-reflective inquiries. Data are framed through Foucault’s concepts of power and will to truth. Results show the discord between data journalism epistemology and its practical implementation. Despite prioritising democratic access to data, technologies and non-hierarchical forms of cooperation, data journalism remains largely dependent on traditional methods and culture.
Transdisciplinary research processes often involve the integration of knowledge and stakeholders from various backgrounds. Here, we introduce the story of the research project AMA (A Mindset for the Anthropocene) on the role of mindsets in the context of sustainability and present an interactive visualization tool that we developed for stakeholder mapping and research communication. Through this platform, we provide access and navigation to everyone interested in this field of research and we have simultaneously created a channel for all stakeholders to co-create content. Here, we describe the design and functionalities of the platform and the participatory way it was developed as part of our stakeholder engagement. We discuss upon how such a design allows for reflection of potential biases in transdisciplinary research processes and simultaneously catalyzing self-organization in stakeholder networks.
As part of the research project Open Data Cloud Services (ODCS), we have been trying to overcome some of the limitations introduced through the heterogeneity of spatial open government data (sOGD). In this paper we describe some of the challenges of sODG and one of the tools we built to spatially organize heterogenous sOGD, to make it easier for users to find data and automatically integrate it into existing data structures and in the future allow for cross-dataset spatial analysis.
The 17th International Conference on Knowledge Management was held in the historic city of Potsdam, Germany. The conference was among the first post-pandemic face to face conferences, and the overall theme of the 17th edition of the ICKM conference rightly focused on “Knowledge, Uncertainty and Risks: From individual to global scale” at different levels of analysis and agency.
Nachtalb
(2022)
Nachtalb is an immersive interface that enables brain-to-brain interaction using multisensory feedback. With the help of the g.tec Unicorn Hybrid Black brain-computer-interface (BCI), brain-activity-data is measured and translated visually with the Oculus Quest 2, tactilely with the bHaptics TactSuit and auditorily with 3D Sound. This intends to create a feedback loop that turns brain activity from data-input into sensory output which directly influences the brain activity data-input again.
In Case You Don’t Know What To Play is a framework for designing a Virtual Reality application that uses spatial distortion to influence the user’s visual perception and ultimately shall manipulate their sense of time. Spatial orientation allows us to judge distances regarding their temporal component. In particular, in self-motion we can estimate the duration it takes to cover a given distance, since time and spatial perception are connected. This connection can be broken with the help of Virtual Reality technology and a perceptual conflict can be created.
Surprise Machines is a project of experimental museology that sets out to visualize the entire image collection of the Harvard Art Museums, with a view to opening up unexpected vistas on more than 200,000 objects usually inaccessible to visitors. The project is part of the exhibition organized by metaLAB (at) Harvard entitled Curatorial A(i)gents and explores the limits of artificial intelligence to display a large set of images and create surprise among visitors. To achieve this feeling of surprise, a choreographic interface was designed to connect the audience’s movement with several unique views of the collection.
Overview of the CLEF-2022 CheckThat! Lab on Fighting the COVID-19 Infodemic and Fake News Detection
(2022)
We describe the fifth edition of the CheckThat! lab, part of the 2022 Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF). The lab evaluates technology supporting tasks related to factuality in multiple languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, German, Spanish, and Turkish. Task 1 asks to identify relevant claims in tweets in terms of check-worthiness, verifiability, harmfullness, and attention-worthiness. Task 2 asks to detect previously fact-checked claims that could be relevant to fact-check a new claim. It targets both tweets and political debates/speeches. Task 3 asks to predict the veracity of the main claim in a news article. CheckThat! was the most popular lab at CLEF-2022 in terms of team registrations: 137 teams. More than one-third (37%) of them actually participated: 18, 7, and 26 teams submitted 210, 37, and 126 official runs for tasks 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
The fifth edition of the CheckThat! Lab is held as part of the 2022 Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF). The lab evaluates technology supporting various factuality tasks in seven languages: Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, German, Spanish, and Turkish. Task 1 focuses on disinformation related to the ongoing COVID-19 infodemic and politics, and asks to predict whether a tweet is worth fact-checking, contains a verifiable factual claim, is harmful to the society, or is of interest to policy makers and why. Task 2 asks to retrieve claims that have been previously fact-checked and that could be useful to verify the claim in a tweet. Task 3 is to predict the veracity of a news article. Tasks 1 and 3 are classification problems, while Task 2 is a ranking one.
The goal of HaS task 8.2 "Open Methods Review" according to the description of work was to develop a "Open Humanities Methods Review Journal" in which methods and tools used in Digital Humanities Research would be reviewed. In order to achieve this, we have launched a metablog called Open Methods. It is a tool which aims at republishing already published content dealing with the use of methods and tools in Digital Humanities (DH) research. The selection is done by an Editorial Team of renowned DH experts. The Editorial Team is coordinated by the Chief Editor and supported by a Management Team. About the nature of this document: This deliverable is the second and last one of work package 8 "Open Methods Infrastructure". It is a short description of the work done within this work package and its result: the OpenMethods metablog.
Information management and content governance in large corporations is an ongoing challenge. As a case study, we present the adaptation of the elastic lists facet browser for browsing and analysing large resource collections in an intranet of a large telecommunication corporation. The application allows users to explore resource aggregations over multiple classification schemata in parallel, enabling not only personalized information access, but also improved understanding of content distributions, as well as trend analysis and target tracking. We further present empirical usability results of a first prototype from questionnaires and eye tracking studies.
We present findings from design research on disclosure at the intersection of data visualization, digital storytelling, and feminism. While there is an increased awareness of power structures in data science, computing, and design, there is little design research to confront these. This work explores the potential of disclosing context information of data stories, i.e., digital storytelling formats utilizing data visualizations, to enable critical-feminist readings of and reflections on these stories. Drawing from a growing body of feminist scholarship in human-computer interaction, data science, and beyond, we identify key aspects and forms of disclosure for embedding them into visual data story interfaces. We devise and validate these aspects and forms within a case study: a Web-based scrollytelling article explaining the feminist concept of intersectionality using a combination of animated illustration, data visualization, and text. With this work, we demonstrate and discuss the potentials and pitfalls of disclosure practices in data storytelling.
Heattile, a new method for heatmap implementations for mobile web-based cartographic applications
(2014)
Mobile handheld computing devices are becoming a more important part of our digital infrastructure. Web-based map services and visualisations for spatial data are being optimised for use on these new mobile devices. Despite the fast development of mobile devices, compared to laptop and desktop computers they remain slower in terms of processing power and have limited memory capacity. Bandwidth in most areas is still limited, regardless of the fast expansion of high-speed internet for mobile devices. To overcome these two limitations an improvement in existing spatial data visualisations is necessary. This chapter compares existing methods and presents a new approach to generating and delivering web-based heat map visualisations for spatial data that is optimised for mobile devices.
Today research is in the midst of a global transformation that is usually referred to as Open Science. Open Science is a response from communities to global societal developments and to the digital transformation of research processes and leads to the emergence of new practices that are embedded in a digital ecosystem. The global Medieval Studies community is slowly adapting to this new culture that raises new questions around scientific practices. This article discusses three major pillars of Open Science: Open Access, Open Data, and Open Science Communication in the Digital Age. It considers the potential of these practices for individual researchers and for the role of medieval research in a modern society and explains good practices to start with.
Scholz, da Costa Oliveira und Dörk widmen sich in ihrem Beitrag Erfahrungen mit digitalen Werkzeugen im Kontext ethnologischer Sammlungen sowie den Herausforderungen, die sich bei der Berücksichtigung unterschiedlicher Wissenspraktiken in der Zusammenarbeit mit Heritage Communities stellen. Ausgehend von dem Projekt Sharing Knowledge (2014-2020), das im Ethnologischen Museum (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin/ Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz) stattfand, wird argumentiert, dass die Trägheit von Infrastrukturen und die Erforschung ihrer Funktionsweise - d.h. die Entschlüsselung der Meistererzählungen und Ausschlussmechanismen hinter musealen Wissenspraktiken - entscheidende Schlüssel darstellen zur Entwicklung von Werkzeugen und Taktiken, um eben diese Trägheit zu umgehen und zu untergraben. Während der erste Teil des Papiers dem Beispielprojekt kritische Aufmerksamkeit schenkt, schlägt der zweite Teil neue Methoden vor, um Infrastrukturen zu entwickeln, die Relationalität und Pluralität zulassen.
Creative coding is a form of postdigital art that uses programming to solve esthetical problems, subordinating functionality to expression. It often comes with rather uncommon usage patterns of coding, going beyond technologies' affordances and finding ways of appropriating them in an individual way and in exchange with others. The learning ecologies GitHub, Stack Overflow, and Pouët present digital infrastructures that curate and support such appropriation-related activities. The paper presents a qualitative analysis of the structure of these spaces, and the appropriation-related communication taking place. It shows how crucial the varying designs of the learning ecologies and the implemented interaction possibilities are for the appropriation activities taking place and draws a line to the desire for stronger participation in postdigital curation.
Curatorial activities provide (infra)structure and meaning to artworks through the selection and combination of different pieces and their public display. Therefore the way context is added shapes people’s perspective towards art. (Post-)digital art and online exhibitions come with specific constraints concerning curation and have a potential to overcome the hierarchies between curators, artists and visitors. In discussing selected digital exhibition formats from the 1990s until today, the article illustrates how the genre has evolved in response to technological changes and concepts of democratization as well as user involvement. Looking at the online exhibition “UN/NATURAL SURROGATES” (2019) the article opens up a perspective towards meta-curating that allows to conceive (online) exhibitions as a means of reflecting on curatorial processes in the postdigital era.
We see more cartographic products in our digital world than ever before. But what role does cartography play in the modern production of cartographic products? In this position paper, we will argue that the democratization and diffusion of cartographic production has also led to the presumed “fading relevance” of cartography. As an argument against this notion, we highlight starting points for the field of cartography to improve modern cartographic production through its inherent cartographic knowledge.
In this article we describe a concept for the digital preservation of the cultural heritage of smaller cultural institutions without their own infrastructure, in order to preserve and use digital objects in the long term. For this purpose, a digital archive will be extended by a pre-ingest component, which will aggregate the digital objects of the cultural institutions and provide access to the archived information. The proposed system for distributed digital preservation can be described by an extended Open Archive Information System (OAIS) reference model—the Outer-Inner OAIS (OO-IO) model. In the Federal state of Brandenburg there are about 340 archives, museums and libraries. Most of them are rather small but of great significance for cultural heritage. The digital preservation of data and information is therefore one of the biggest challenges. Unfortunately, smaller institutions often lack the knowledge and the resources to meet this challenge. The described approach supports these cultural and research institutions in their efforts to preserve cultural heritage.
In this paper we present a general definition of the concept ’intuitive use of user interfaces’ on the basis of our current interdisciplinary work. ’Intuitive use’ is regarded as a characteristic of human-machine systems. It refers to a special kind of interaction process between users and technical systems that use the users’ intuition. The main part of the paper deals with central aspects of this definition in detail and discusses pre-conditions and restrictions of the use of the concept. The main aspects that we discuss are the design of technical systems, application and non-conscious use of previous knowledge, intuition as a non-conscious process, interaction, and effectiveness. We complement this discussion by addressing the relationship between aesthetics and intuitive use.
SocialButton
(2007)
We are exploring the use of small displays as an instrument to enhance social communication. Our focus is on encouraging communication between strangers by revealing the existence of common friends. In the following we present the concept of the SocialButton, a wearable mobile device which displays aspects of friend-of-a-friend networks. A group study has provided us with an initial understanding regarding the potential of the SocialButton to influence our social environment.
In this paper, we investigate possibilities and limitations of temperature change as a method for information display in mobile applications. While some widespread and well-recognized haptic displays such as force-feedback often trigger the user's immediate attention, we will focus on ambient strategies for tactile information display, that is, the display of gradual state changes in the user's periphery that do not unexpectedly interrupt her current tasks, but builds on the mind's ability for subliminal perception of environmental change instead [1, 2].
To this end, we present a series of prototypes of mobile devices that display ambient information by means of thermal change based on the thermo-electric effect [3]. In order to assess the expedience and feasibility of such a display, a series of user tests have been conducted with respect to both, the ability for thermal change recognition and a concrete application scenario for such a display.
Articulated paint
(2007)
In this paper we present the concept and prototype of a new musical interface that utilizes the close relationship between gestural expression in the act of painting and that of playing a musical instrument in order to provide non-musicians the opportunity to create musical expression. A physical brush on a canvas acts as the instrument. The characteristics of its stroke are intuitively mapped to a conductor program, defining expressive parameters of the tone in real-time. Two different interaction modes highlight the importance of bodily expression in making music as well as the value of a metaphorical visual representation.
Today numerous telecommunication services are implemented and brought to users. Common for these services is that their interfaces differ tremendously. As a consequence users have to learn the usage of each interface. Amorelation provides the new approach of meshed interaction design patterns (MIDP) that enable service usage in a consistent way for arbitrary telecommunication services. These patterns enable the design of complex interfaces for a variety of interfaces in a convenient and similar manner. With other words, through MIDP receives the user an unified user experience for a variety of applications. A novelty of this approach is the linkage between the modeling of patterns and interface design, which is achieved by a hierarchical structuring of the patterns. The MIDP approach is applied to a Mobile Messaging Service. This application is evaluated with and without MIDP by well-known usability measures like efficiency and ease-to-use.
United-pulse
(2008)
This paper introduces a device that creates remote intimacy by the use of two rings named "united-pulse". Each ring can measure the wearer's heartbeat and send it to the partner's ring. Hereby, artificial corporeality is created between the couple. By means of a working prototype, united-pulse has been successfully tested. Among the 28 participants the prototype has attracted large interest. Through the heartbeat - the essential vital sign - a feeling of being very close to the partner is provided. Touching the ring allows a small moment of intimacy in situations where emotional support is needed.
In this paper we present a device to support the communication of couples in long-distance relationships. While a synchronous exchange of factual information over distance is supported by telephone, e-mail and chat-systems, the transmission of nonverbal aspects of communication is still unsatisfactory. Videocalls let us see the partners' facial expression in real time. However, to experience a more intimate conversation physical closeness is needed. Stroking while holding hands is a special and emotional gesture for couples. Hence, we developed a device that enables couples to exchange the physical gesture of stroking regardless of distance and location. The device allows both sending and receiving. A user test supported our concept and provided new insights for future development.
{hi}stories
(2008)
With more and more digital information being produced by individuals every day, we will soon be able to use it to understand the past. Based on this premise this paper presents {Hi}Stories, a system to support the creation and access of user generated contents as historical evidences. In {Hi}Stories users aggregate contents from Internet and are invited to contribute their own material. It combines a number of research themes: collaborative information structuring, combination of contents from online services, and visualization and browsing of structured information collections.
Spoken Words
(2008)
Writing is a predominantly visual task. In the following, we describe a system that adds a new modality to computer-supported text editing: Listening with closed eyes.
We present a prototype, for which we combined a text-to-speech software, Microsoft Word and a face tracking system. It reads out the current sentence in Microsoft Word as soon as the user closes both eyes.
In this paper we discuss further details of the concept and its background, describe the implementation of the prototype and disclose first user testing results, before we conclude our findings with an outlook on future research.
Perspective change
(2008)
This project explores the change of on-screen views through single-sided eye closure. A prototype was developed, three different applications are presented: Activating a sniper scope in a 3D shooter game, zooming out into a overview perspective over a web page, and filtering out icons on a cluttered desktop. Initial user testing results are presented.
With relational perspectives, we examine the potential of traversing cultural collections along the richness of individual facets and relations through the process of developing an exploration-centered visualization. Cultural collections can contain thousands of artifacts, of which each typically possesses a diverse set of properties and individual facets constituting a unique relationship to the rest of the collection. Therefore, to create an appropriate representation of the complex data of each underlying artifact, oftentimes, it is not only interesting to get an overview of the entire collection from one perspective, but to explore the specific context of an artifact and the various relations it may have to other items. To investigate the potential of relational perspectives, we selected an art collection as a particularly promising case study. By following and reporting from a collaborative and iterative design process with an art museum, we developed a web interface that contrasts a collection overview with three situated visualizations each exposing a different kind of relational perspective on the art collection from an artifact.
The role of libraries changed tremendously in the digital age. Search engine technology and full text availability now define the standards for information research. Libraries as knowledge providers have to face the challenges of the new technologies. Our poster contribution takes the example of Augmented Reality (AR) to show a way to use the potential of digital technology for library services. AR offers new possibilities to contextualize library data. Hence the transfer of knowledge can be enriched by virtual information and visualization. In our poster we introduce the project mylibrARy and the status quo of the conceptual process of designing a library AR-app. mylibrARy is a cooperation project between the University of Applied Sciences in Potsdam, a public library in Berlin and metaio GmbH. By providing mobile access to enriched library data the institution is able to stay in touch with users or even generate new users with a high affinity for digital technology. According to the result of our first of four user studies especially the integration of social media and social reading functions plays a crucial role in reaching that aim. Beside the connection to the local library knowledge organization system in the app we plan to integrate further features for the semantic contextualization such as the Wikipedia categories.
Fritzing
(2009)
Today a growing community of DIY-practitioners, artists and designers are using microcontroller-based toolkits to express their concepts for digital artifacts by building them. However, as these prototypes are generally constructed using solder-free technologies, they are often fragile and unreliable. This means a huge burden of care and upkeep for these inventions when they are either exhibited or sold.
We present a software application called Fritzing which allows artists, designers and DIY-tinkerers to prepare their hardware inventions for production. Through an interface metaphor based on the typical workflow of the target group, Fritzing has proven its ability to provide useful support in the steps following the invention of an interactive artifact.
Fritzing serves also as a tool for documenting these interactive artifacts. As sharing of knowledge has been a driving force within this new DIY-movement, there is a need for a consistent and readable form of documentation which Fritzing can provide.
Fritzing has also proven to be a useful tool in teaching electronics to people without an engineering background.
Stick, Click n' Call
(2009)
This paper describes a new interaction concept, which is based on customizable self-adhesive stickers with an integrated button, manufacturable at low cost. By pressing the button, users can execute specialized functionalities on their mobile phones, e.g. dialing phone numbers or accessing URLs. We present three usage scenarios and a proof-of-concept prototype.
Living interfaces
(2009)
In this paper, we present a novel type of persuasive home appliance: A thrifty water faucet. Through a servo motor construction, it is enabled to move and behave in life-like manners and to step into dialogue with the user. For example about water consumption or hygiene. We sought to research the reactions of users to such an appliance, alongside possible implications for the design of future human-machine interfaces.
This project is part of a larger series of experiments in the Living Interfaces project, exploring ways in which reduced and abstract life-like movements can be beneficial for Human-Machine Interaction.
The digital hourglass
(2009)
This paper presents the Digital Hourglass, an alarm clock that focuses on the amount of sleep, rather than wake-up times. It follows a simple approach, lighting one LED for each hour of sleep, and physically resembles the interaction with a conventional hourglass: Tilting the hourglass moves 'time' between its chambers, placing it in an upright position activates it, turning it by 180° snoozes it and placing it horizontally on a surface turns it off.
Living interfaces
(2009)
In this paper we introduce a new way to interact intimately with an automated system. The Intimate Door Lock investigates the psychological effects of intimate humanhuman interaction being applied to man-machine interfaces. The door lock, in our prototype, is installed at the inside of a domestic front door, and remains locked until given a kiss by its owner. In our prototype, the element to be kissed is a camera-augmented mirror, which we intended to use as a means of lowering the inhibition level. This work is part of a larger series of experiments in the Living Interfaces project, exploring ways in which reduced life-like movements can be beneficial for Human-Machine Interaction.
Living interfaces
(2009)
This paper introduces the Impatient Toaster, a kitchen appliance designed to motivate its owners to eat more often and in regular intervals: After not using it for a while, it signalizes hunger through nervous movements. This project sought to explore life-like behaviour as a means of increasing user's sympathy for everyday objects. We present a prototype that was informally tested with six participants in a situated user test. The results indicate that sympathy and perceived cuteness can arise from life-like movements that, as we propose, represent an object's will of its own. This work is part of a larger series of experiments in the Living Interfaces project, exploring ways in which reduced life-like movements can be beneficial for Human-Machine Interaction.
Human-computer cooperation
(2009)
Whether it be DVD-players, automatic ticket machines, cell phones, PDAs, machines, computers or even airplane cockpits, an increasing number of products at home and at work have a user interface, in other words a place where humans and machines meet. Direct contact with interactive technology was previously limited to the workplace. Now, there is hardly a social group that does not come into contact directly or indirectly with computer or information systems. However, the continuous increase in the performance and functionality of information and communication systems has resulted in rising complexity in controlling such systems. The practicality of user interfaces has become more and more a key criterion for acceptance and success in the market.
Today, digital learning resources in architecture are spread over a growing number of repositories world-wide. Students of architecture face increasing problems finding and being aware of appropriate learning resources they need within their collaborative and/or exploratory learning scenarios. The Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe (MACE) system addresses these issues by intelligently aggregating and linking information about learning resources from various repositories. We show how, by establishing explicit relations between the learning resources and by adding community features, students are supported in their learning activities. First experiments indicate that the chosen approach improves the results students can achieve in their studies.
Recording inner life
(2010)
"Recording Inner Life" is the title of my master's thesis. It is a system to express the "inner life" (feelings, affects, and emotions) and record them on a long-term basis into a computational system. In contrast to a lot of the research in the field of affective computing this project is not dedicated to enable machines to detect human emotions but to allow an adequate input for emotions. It presents "MyInnerLife", a physical input device to express and record emotions non-verbally.
This studio will give participants a hands-on introduction to Fritzing, a free software tool for advancing electronic prototyping for researchers and practitioners of tangible, interactive electronics. Participants will bring one of their hand-wired prototypes (or a concrete concept) and in several steps learn to document it properly, share it with the community, and turn it into a professional printed circuit board.
Valeo
(2010)
In current healthcare research, pain logs are an important means to measure the impact of medication and to detect pain patterns. However, the entry of textual pain data may be negatively reinforcing, due to its character of direct confrontation with one's pain, potentially leading to a higher pain awareness. This paper introduces valeo, a new form of a tactile pain log, which is based on a vibrotactile, pressure- and tilt-sensitive device. Future iterations will also include body part recognition. By squeezing it close to one's own body, the subjective intensity of a local pain is manifested in the device. Via a shove gesture, it is then transmitted to a docking station. Advantageously, the pain data is covert and conceptually alienated from the patient's body, which may support a possible relief. A proof-of-concept prototype and a user study indicate that our concept is perceived as convenient and reduces negative conditioning.
In this paper, we investigate the components of a Research 2.0 infrastructure. We propose building blocks and their concrete implementation to leverage Research 2.0 practice and technologies in our field, including a publication feed format for exchanging publication data, a RESTful API to retrieve publication and Web 2.0 data, and a publisher suit for refining and aggregating data. We illustrate the use of this infrastructure with Research 2.0 application examples ranging from a Mash-Up environment, a mobile and multitouch application, thereby demonstrating the strength of this infrastructure.
Muse
(2010)
This paper introduces Muse, an interactive visualization of publications to explore the collaborations between institutions. For this, the data on co-authorship is utilized, as these signify an existing level of collaboration. The affiliations of authors are geo-located, resulting in relations not only among institutions, but also between regions and countries. We explain our ideas behind the visualization and the interactions, and briefly describe the data processing and the implementation of the working prototype. The prototype focuses on a visualization for large tabletop displays, enabling multiple users to explore their personal networks, as well as emerging patterns in shared networks within a collaborative public setting. For the prototype we used the publication data of the EC-TEL conference.
Venice unfolding
(2010)
We introduce Venice Unfolding, a case study on tangible geo-visualization on an interactive tabletop to enable the exploration of architectural projects in Venice. Our tangible user interface consists of a large display showing projects on a map, and a polyhedral object to browse these data interactively by selecting and filtering various metadata facets. In this paper we describe a prototype employing new methods to communicate territorial data in visual and tangible ways. The object reduces the barrier between the physical world and virtual data, and eases the understanding of faceted geographical data, enabling urban planners and citizens alike to participate in the discovery and analysis of information referring to the physical world.
This paper presents Muse, a visualization of institutional co-authorship of publications. The objective is to create an interactive visualization, which enables users to visually analyze collaboration between institutions based on publications. The easy to use multitouch interaction, and the size of the interactive surface invite users to explore the visualization in semi-public spaces.
Mobile learning activities of commuters have widely been neglected. The paper reports on the adaption of a grounded innovation approach involving a futures workshop for interaction design and ideation based on ethnographic insights in the field of mobile learning. Current obstacles and utopian futures of mobiles learning lay the grounds for envisioning new systems to support mobile learning for public transport. A system to enhance comfort zones for mobile learners is being specified and illustrated. It proposes a gesture-based handling of tablet computers in order create an adaptable and comfortable personal learning environment with individually adaptable and familiar modules. An iDesk prototype preserving a personal comfort zone for mobile learners is presented. The system intends to support formal and informal learning in mobile times.
Current search engines are used for retrieving relevant documents from the huge amount of data available and have become an essential tool for the majority of Web users. Standard search engines do not consider semantic information that can help in recognizing the relevance of a document with respect to the meaning of a query. In this paper, we present our system architecture and a first user study, where we show that the use of semantics can help users in finding relevant information, filtering it ad facilitating quicker access to data.
This paper presents a tabletop visualization of relations between geo-positioned locations. We developed an interactive visualization, which enables users to visually explore a geospatial network of actors. The multitouch tabletop, and the large size of the interactive surface invite users to explore the visualization in semi-public spaces.
For a case study on scientific collaborations between institutions, we applied and improved several existing techniques for a walk-up-and-use system aimed at scientists for a social setting at a conference. We describe our iterative design approach, our two implemented prototypes, and the lessons learnt from their creation. We conducted user evaluation studies at the two on-location demonstrations, which provide evidence of the prototype usability and usefulness, and its support for understanding the distribution and connectivity in a geospatial network.
CARS 2012 builds upon the success of the three previous editions held in conjunction with the 3rd to 5th ACM Conferences on Recommender Systems from 2009 to 2011. The 1st CARS Workshop was held in New York, NY, USA, whereas Barcelona, Spain, was home of the 2nd CARS Workshop in 2010. In 2011, the 3rd CARS workshop was held in Chicago, IL, USA.
The shift from hypothesis-driven to data-driven science implies new methods for hypothesis generation. Creativity support has to be offered for problem finding based on research data. DataCreativityTools (DCT) is a research & development project building a pilot creativity support tool for the OpEN.SC biomedical data.
A lot of information that is already available on the Web, or retrieved from local information sys-tems and social networks, is structured in data silos that are not semantically related. Semantic technologies make it apparent that the use of typed links that directly express their relations are an advantage for every application that can reuse the incorporated knowledge about the data. For this reason, data integration, through reengineering (e.g., triplify) or querying (e.g., D2R), is an important task in order to make information available for everyone. Thus, in order to build a semantic map of the data, we need knowledge about data items itself and the relation between heterogeneous data items. Here we present our work of providing Lexical Linked Data (LLD) through a meta-model that contains all the resources and gives the possibility to retrieve and navigate them from different per-spectives. After giving the definition of Lexical Linked Data, we describe the existing datasets we collected and the new datasets we included. Here we describe their format and show some use cases where we link lexical data, and show how to reuse and inference semantic data de-rived from lexical data. Different lexical resources (MultiWordNet, EuroWordNet, MEMODATA Lexicon, the Hamburg Methaphor Data-base) are connected to each other towards an Integrated Vocabulary for LLD that we evaluate and present.
The SPIM workshop focuses especially on people that are working on the social or semantic Web, machine learning, user modeling, recommender systems, information retrieval, semantic interaction, or their combination. The goal is to bring together researchers and practitioners to initiating discussions on the different requirements and challenges coming with the social and semantic Web for personalized information retrieval systems. The workshop aims at improving the exchange of ideas between the different research communities and practitioners involved in the research on semantic personalized information management.
Context-aware information is widely available in various ways and is becoming more and more important for enhancing retrieval performance and recommendation results. The current main issue to cope with is not only recommending or retrieving the most relevant items and content, but defining them ad hoc. Other relevant issues include personalizing and adapting the information and the way it is displayed to the user's current situation and interests. Ubiquitous computing further provides new means for capturing user feedback on items and providing information.
Context-aware information is widely available in various ways and is becoming more and more important for enhancing retrieval performance and recommendation results. The current main issue to cope with is not only recommending or retrieving the most relevant items and content, but defining them ad hoc. Other relevant issues include personalizing and adapting the information and the way it is displayed to the user’s current situation and interests. Ubiquitous computing further provides new means for capturing user feedback on items and providing information.
Context-aware information is widely available in various ways and is becoming more and more important for enhancing retrieval performance and recommendation results. The current main issue to cope with is not only recommending or retrieving the most relevant items and content, but defining them ad hoc. Other relevant issues include personalizing and adapting the information and the way it is displayed to the user's current situation and interests.
The workshop on Context-awareness in Retrieval and Recommendation is a forum for research on context-awareness in information retrieval, recommender systems and human computer interaction. The fourth iteration of the workshop was organized in conjunction to the 36th European Conference on Information Retrieval in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The Reason Why
(2014)
Recommender Systems refer to those applications that offer contents or items to the users, based on their previous activity. These systems are broadly used in several fields and applications, being common that an user interact with several recommender systems during his daily activities. However, most of these systems are black boxes which users really don’t understand how to work. This lack of transparency often causes the distrust of the users. A suitable solution is to offer explanations to the user about why the system is offering such recommendations. This work deals with the problem of retrieving and evaluating explanations based on hybrid recommenders. These explanations are meant to improve the perceived recommendation quality from the user’s perspective. Along with recommended items, explanations are presented to the user to underline the quality of the recommendation. Hybrid recommenders should express relevance by providing reasons speaking for a recommended item. In this work we present an attribute explanation retrieval approach to provide these reasons and show how to evaluate such approaches. Therefore, we set up an online user study where users were asked to provide movie feedback. For each rated movie we additionally retrieved feedback about the reasons this movie was liked or disliked. With this data, explanation retrieval can be studied in general, but it can also be used to evaluate such explanations.
In this paper we present a case study for an interactive surface, an explanatory tangible multitouch system in an exhibition context. The system is used as an expressive representation of the complex concept of Micro Smart Grids (MSGs) and their influence on our future energy infrastructure. We built the experience upon research on integrating tangibles into playful and exploratory learning environments. Beyond the well-researched learning experience with tangibles, we developed the system to stimulate and foster discussions on the subject of MSGs. Besides the technology behind the system we will discuss limitations and advantages of combining tangible and multitouch technologies. To conclude we present reflections on the design and interaction concepts that were embedded into the system.
Context-aware information is widely available in various ways and is becoming more and more important for enhancing retrieval performance and recommendation results. A primary challenge is not only recommending or retrieving the most relevant items and content, but defining them ad hoc. Other relevant issues include personalizing and adapting the information and the way it is displayed to the user’s current situation and interests. Ubiquitous computing provides new means for capturing user feedback on items and offers information. This year we are particularly interested in contributions investigating how context can influence decision making in contexts such as health, finance, food, education etc. and how systems can exploit context to assert positive behavioral change.
This paper presents an exploratory study conducted to understand how audio-visual prompts are understood by people on an emotional level as a first step towards the more challenging task of designing emotionally aligned prompts for persons with cognitive disabilities such as Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD). Persons with ADRD often need assistance from a caregiver to complete daily living activities such as washing hands, making food, or getting dressed. Artificially intelligent systems have been developed that can assist in such situations. This paper presents a set of prompt videos of a virtual human ‘Rachel’, wherein she expressively communicates prompts at each step of a simple hand washing task, with various human-like emotions and behaviors. A user study was conducted for 30 such videos with respect to three basic and important dimensions of emotional experience: evaluation, potency, and activity. The results show that, while people generally agree on the evaluation (valence: good/bad) of a prompt, consensus about power and activity is not as socially homogeneous. Our long term aim is to enhance such systems by delivering automated prompts that are emotionally aligned with individuals in order to help with prompt adherence and with long-term adoption.
This paper introduces an approach for visualizing large spatial time series data sets on mobile devices. The HeatTile system (Meier et al. 2014) is used and extended with a progressive loading approach, the stream approach. By combining those two approaches, this study aimed to overcome the performance and bandwidth limitations inherent to mobile devices. This chapter focuses on the technological advantages of the presented approach in a performance comparison with other common approaches. Furthermore, an animated time series visualization is introduced, as well as an interface designed specifically for the presented method in order to emphasize the advantages of the approach. To further highlight the possible applications of the method, two real-world use cases are presented.
Exploring vibrotactile feedback on the body and foot for the purpose of pedestrian navigation
(2015)
In this paper, we present an evaluation of vibrotactile onbody feedback for the purpose of pedestrian navigation. For this specific task, many researchers already provide different approaches such as vibrating belts, wristbands or shoes. Still, there are issues left that have to be considered, such as which body position is most suitable, what kind of vibration patterns are easy to interpret, and how applicable are vibrotactile feedback systems in real scenarios. To find answers, we reconstructed prototypes commonly found in literature and continued to further evaluate different foot-related designs. On the one hand, we learned that vibrotactile feedback at the foot reduces visual attention and thus also potentially reduces stress. However, on the other hand, we found that urban space can be very diverse, and ambiguous and therefore a vibrotactile system cannot completely replace common path finding systems for pedestrians. Rather, we envision such a system to be applied complementary as an assistive technology.
Affect control processes
(2015)
This paper describes a novel method for building affectively intelligent human-interactive agents. The method is based on a key sociological insight that has been developed and extensively verified over the last twenty years, but has yet to make an impact in artificial intelligence. The insight is that resource bounded humans will, by default, act to maintain affective consistency. Humans have culturally shared fundamental affective sentiments about identities, behaviours, and objects, and they act so that the transient affective sentiments created during interactions confirm the fundamental sentiments. Humans seek and create situations that confirm or are consistent with, and avoid and suppress situations that disconfirm or are inconsistent with, their culturally shared affective sentiments. This “affect control principle” has been shown to be a powerful predictor of human behaviour. In this paper, we present a probabilistic and decision-theoretic generalisation of this principle, and we demonstrate how it can be leveraged to build affectively intelligent artificial agents. The new model, called BayesAct, can maintain multiple hypotheses about sentiments simultaneously as a probability distribution, and can make use of an explicit utility function to make value-directed action choices. This allows the model to generate affectively intelligent interactions with people by learning about their identity, predicting their behaviours using the affect control principle, and taking actions that are simultaneously goal-directed and affect-sensitive. We demonstrate this generalisation with a set of simulations. We then show how our model can be used as an emotional “plug-in” for artificially intelligent systems that interact with humans in two different settings: an exam practice assistant (tutor) and an assistive device for persons with a cognitive disability.
The Marker Cluster
(2016)
The growing amount of gathered, stored and available data is creating a need for useful mass-data visualizations in many domains. The mapping of large spatial data sets is not only of interest for experts anymore, but, with regard to the latest advances in web cartography, also moves into the domain of public cartographic applications. One interactive web-based cartographic interface design pattern that helps with visualizing and interacting with large, high density data sets is the marker cluster; a functionality already in use in many web-based products and solutions. In this article, the author will present their ongoing research on the problem of “too many markers.” They will present an empirical evaluation and comparison of marker cluster techniques and similar approaches, including heatmaps and tiled heatmaps. They conclude with a first concept for overcoming some of the obstacles that they were able to identify in their study and thereby introduce a new direction for further research.
SemRes
(2016)
Documentation is very time consuming; conservators have to categorize photos, give detailed description of the procedures and justify decisions about materials. Every conservator delivers his/her own documentation to the respective monument administrations that archive it in their shelves, without any possibility to access them digitally. In this case, the access to already conducted procedures, as well as the provision of the knowledge about the methods and materials used are very difficult often almost impossible. The SemRes System provides conservators with semantic technologies in order to better structure and retrieve their knowledge and supports them in decision-making for conservation and conservation procedures.
Many datasets have multiple perspectives – for example space, time and description – and often analysts are required to study these multiple perspectives concurrently. This concurrent analysis becomes difficult when data are grouped and split into small multiples for comparison. A design challenge is thus to provide representations that enable multiple perspectives, split into small multiples, to be viewed simultaneously in ways that neither clutter nor overload. We present a design framework that allows us to do this. We claim that multi-perspective comparison across small multiples may be possible by superimposing perspectives on one another rather than juxtaposing those perspectives side-by-side. This approach defies conventional wisdom and likely results in visual and informational clutter. For this reason we propose designs at three levels of abstraction for each perspective. By flexibly varying the abstraction level, certain perspectives can be brought into, or out of, focus. We evaluate our framework through laboratory-style user tests. We find that superimposing, rather than juxtaposing, perspective views has little effect on performance of a low-level comparison task. We reflect on the user study and its design to further identify analysis situations for which our framework may be desirable. Although the user study findings were insufficiently discriminating, we believe our framework opens up a new design space for multi-perspective visual analysis.
The Haptic Body Scale
(2017)
Followers of the Quantified Self movement track, analyze and compare vital and environmental data to optimize themselves. It can be stressful to keep all the measured values under control when pursuing this ambitious way of life. Body weight can be an especially emotional issue for many people and slight differences can be perceived as lack of discipline, although little fluctuations are natural. In this paper, we present a tangible display for body weight, based on floor rigidity. It displays body weight without numbers, which makes it less suitable for comparisons, while still giving the user an idea about their weight. We describe the metaphorical foundations of the concept, as well as the development of two prototypes, which implement the envisioned full-body weighing experience. We demonstrate how the design of a display can influence the users' connotation of data.
Information visualization has great potential to make sense of the increasing amount of data generated by complex machine-learning algorithms. We design a set of visualizations for a new deep-learning algorithm called FaceLift (goodcitylife.org/facelift). This algorithm is able to generate a beautified version of a given urban image (such as from Google Street View), and our visualizations compare pairs of original and beautified images. With those visualizations, we aim at helping practitioners understand what happened during the algorithmic beautification without requiring them to be machine-learning experts. We evaluate the effectiveness of our visualizations to do just that with a survey among practitioners. From the survey results, we derive general design guidelines on how information visualization makes complex machine-learning algorithms more understandable to a general audience.
Photography in the digital
(2018)
Photography in the digitally created or digitized reality is an everyday activity that is rarely discussed in the context of photographic debates. This refers to practices such as in-game photography or, simpler yet, the screenshot. The paper focuses on their history, the specific status and materiality of these images of screens. Their (hi)story begins with screen image photography of measured data on cathode ray tubes and the photographic capture of x-ray screens. Screenshots and in-game photography can be seen throughout this context but they are cameraless and can therefore be understood and discussed within a long history of experimental photographic practices. Should we speak here at all of photography? If so, what is their photographic specificity? Which image of reality do they provide us?
Shifted Maps
(2018)
We present a hybrid visualization technique that integrates maps into network visualizations to reveal and analyze diverse topologies in geospatial movement data. With the rise of GPS tracking in various contexts such as smartphones and vehicles there has been a drastic increase in geospatial data being collect for personal reflection and organizational optimization. The generated movement datasets contain both geographical and temporal information, from which rich relational information can be derived. Common map visualizations perform especially well in revealing basic spatial patterns, but pay less attention to more nuanced relational properties. In contrast, network visualizations represent the specific topological structure of a dataset through the visual connections of nodes and their positioning. So far there has been relatively little research on combining these two approaches. Shifted Maps aims to bring maps and network visualizations together as equals. The visualization of places shown as circular map extracts and movements between places shown as edges, can be analyzed in different network arrangements, which reveal spatial and temporal topologies of movement data. We implemented a web-based prototype and report on challenges and opportunities about a novel network layout of places gathered during a qualitative evaluation.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence and computer science can be used by social scientists in their study of groups and teams. Here, we explain how developments in machine learning and simulations with artificially intelligent agents can help group and team scholars to overcome two major problems they face when studying group dynamics. First, because empirical research on groups relies on manual coding, it is hard to study groups in large numbers (the scaling problem). Second, conventional statistical methods in behavioral science often fail to capture the nonlinear interaction dynamics occurring in small groups (the dynamics problem). Machine learning helps to address the scaling problem, as massive computing power can be harnessed to multiply manual codings of group interactions. Computer simulations with artificially intelligent agents help to address the dynamics problem by implementing social psychological theory in data-generating algorithms that allow for sophisticated statements and tests of theory. We describe an ongoing research project aimed at computational analysis of virtual software development teams.
Any-Cubes
(2019)
Here we present Any-Cubes, a prototype toy with which children can intuitively and playfully explore and understand machine learning as well as Internet of Things technology. Our prototype is a combination of deep learning-based image classification [12] and machine-to-machine (m2m) communication via MQTT. The system consists of two physical and tangible wooden cubes. Cube 1 ("sensor cube") is inspired by Google's teachable machine [14,15]. The sensor cube can be trained on any object or scenery. The machine learning functionality is directly implemented on the microcontroller (Raspberry Pi) by a Google Edge TPU Stick. Via MQTT protocol, the microcontroller sends its current status to Cube 2, the actuator cube. The actuator cube provides three switches (relays controlled by an Arduino board) to which peripheral devices can be connected. This allows simple if-then functions to be executed in real time, regardless of location. We envision our system as an intuitive didactic tool for schools and maker spaces.
We describe the fourth edition of the CheckThat! Lab, part of the 2021 Cross-Language Evaluation Forum (CLEF). The lab evaluates technology supporting various tasks related to factuality, and it is offered in Arabic, Bulgarian, English, and Spanish. Task 1 asks to predict which tweets in a Twitter stream are worth fact-checking (focusing on COVID-19). Task 2 asks to determine whether a claim in a tweet can be verified using a set of previously fact-checked claims. Task 3 asks to predict the veracity of a target news article and its topical domain. The evaluation is carried out using mean average precision or precision at rank k for the ranking tasks, and F1 for the classification tasks.
We describe the fourth edition of the CheckThat! Lab, part of the 2021 Conference and Labs of the Evaluation Forum (CLEF). The lab evaluates technology supporting tasks related to factuality, and covers Arabic, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, and Turkish. Task 1 asks to predict which posts in a Twitter stream are worth fact-checking, focusing on COVID-19 and politics (in all five languages). Task 2 asks to determine whether a claim in a tweet can be verified using a set of previously fact-checked claims (in Arabic and English). Task 3 asks to predict the veracity of a news article and its topical domain (in English). The evaluation is based on mean average precision or precision at rank k for the ranking tasks, and macro-F1 for the classification tasks. This was the most popular CLEF-2021 lab in terms of team registrations: 132 teams. Nearly one-third of them participated: 15, 5, and 25 teams submitted official runs for tasks 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
Effective use of data is an essential asset to modern cities. Visualization as a tool for analysis, exploration, and communication has become a driving force in the task of unravelling our complex urban fabrics. This paper outlines the findings from a series of three workshops from 2018-2020 bringing together experts in urban data visualization with the aim of exploring multidisciplinary perspectives from the human-centric lens. Based on the rich and detailed workshop discussions identifying challenges and opportunities for urban data visualization research, we outline major human-centric themes and considerations fundamental for CityVis design and introduce a framework for an urban visualization design space.
The Public Life of Data
(2021)
This research investigates how people engage with data visualizations when commenting on the social platform Reddit. There has been considerable research on collaborative sensemaking with visualizations and the personal relation of people with data. Yet, little is known about how public audiences without specific expertise and shared incentives openly express their thoughts, feelings, and insights in response to data visualizations. Motivated by the extensive social exchange around visualizations in online communities, this research examines characteristics and motivations of people’s reactions to posts featuring visualizations. Following a Grounded Theory approach, we study 475 reactions from the /r/dataisbeautiful community, identify ten distinguishable reaction types, and consider their contribution to the discourse. A follow-up survey with 168 Reddit users clarified their intentions to react. Our results help understand the role of personal perspectives on data and inform future interfaces that integrate audience reactions into visualizations to foster a public discourse about data.
I/O Bits
(2021)
We present I/O Bits, a prototype personal informatics system that explores the potential for user-driven and situated self-tracking. With simple tactile inputs and small e-paper visualizations, I/O Bits are dedicated physical devices that allow individuals to track and visualize different kinds of personal activities in-situ. This is in contrast to most self-tracking systems, which automate data collection, centralize information displays, or integrate into multi-purpose devices like smartwatches or mobile phones. We report findings from an e-paper visualization workshop and a prototype deployment where participants constructed their own I/O Bits and used them to track a range of personal data. Based on these experiences, we contribute insights and opportunities for situated and user-driven personal informatics.
Nachtalb
(2021)
Nachtalb is an immersive interface that enables brain-to-brain interaction using multisensory feedback. With the help of the g.tec Unicorn Hybrid Black brain-computer-interface (BCI), brain-activity-data is measured and translated visually with the Oculus Quest 2, tactilely with the bHaptics TactSuit and auditorily with 3D Sound. This intends to create a feedback loop that turns brain activity from data-input into sensory output which directly influences the brain activity data-input again.
Topography of Violence
(2021)
Based on a collaborative visualization design process involving sensitive historical data and historiographical expertise, we investigate the relevance of ethical principles in visualization design. While fundamental ethical norms like truthfulness and accuracy are already well-described and common goals in visualization design, datasets that are accompanied by specific ethical concerns need to be processed and visualized with an additional level of carefulness and thought. There has been little research on adequate visualization design incorporating such considerations. To address this gap we present insights from Topography of Violence, a visualization project with the Jewish Museum Berlin that focuses on a dataset of more than 4,500 acts of violence against Jews in Germany between 1930 and 1938. Drawing from the joint project, we develop an approach to the visualization of sensitive data, which features both conceptual and procedural considerations for visualization design. Our findings provide value for both visualization researchers and practitioners by highlighting challenges and opportunities for ethical data visualization.
mæve – An Interactive Tabletop Installation for Exploring Background Information in Exhibitions
(2009)
This paper introduces the installation mæve: a novel approach to present background information in exhibitions in a highly interactive, tangible and sociable manner. Visitors can collect paper cards representing the exhibits and put them on an interactive surface to display associated concepts and relations to other works. As a result, users can explore both the unifying themes of the exhibition as well as individual characteristics of exhibits. On basis of metadata schemata developed in the MACE (Metadata for Architectural Contents in Europe) project, the system has been put to use the Architecture Biennale to display the entries to the Everyville student competition.
User Activity Display
(2009)
Our project is a system to express emotions and record them on a long-term basis. In contrast to a lot of the research in the field of affective computing our project is not dedicated to enable machines to detect human emotions but to allow new input methods. This demo presents 'MyInnerLife', a physical input device to express and record emotions non-verbally.
This work is part of ongoing research on the visualization of spatial relationships in fictional works. Our aim is to arrive at aesthetic representations of fictional narratives set in actual places such as cities. Novel City Maps offers two map views, one inspired by transit maps and the other by conventional street maps. The former uses the aesthetic of abstract transit maps to reveal the co-occurrence structures between important places in a story. The street map view is designed as a spatial fingerprint of a novel by highlighting the places occurring often in the story.