Snap2Diverse: Coordinating Information Visualizations and Virtual Environments

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Snap2Diverse Coordinating Information
Visualizations and Virtual Environments
SPIE Visualization and Data Analysis 2004

• Nicholas F. Polys, Chris North,
• Doug A. Bowman, Andrew Ray,
• Maxim Moldenhauer, Chetan Dandekar

Department of Computer Science Center for Human
Computer Interaction Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University
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Problem Integrated Information Spaces

• Researchers, designers, students, and analysts
  need to explore, search, recognize, and compare
  patterns across a wide variety of data types and
  applications.
• Some representations are better suited to
  different data types and questions
• Abstract information -gt Information
  Visualization
• Perceptual or spatial information -gt Virtual
  Environments

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User Problem

• Perceptual, environmental phenomena alone do not
  guarantee accurate mental models
• Interfaces for information and controls are
  consistently under-represented and poorly
  integrated in VEs

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Developer Problem

• Increasingly, objects rendered in VEs have
  metadata and annotations associated with them.
  These may change over time.
• Lacking design guidelines and information
  architectures for efficient management of
  Integrated Information Spaces

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Approach Information-Rich Virtual Environments
(IRVEs)

• IRVEs are at the union of VE and Info
  Visperceptual abstract information is
  simultaneously accessible and linked
• Define the issues and the task space for this
  class of applications
• Define the design space to solve and support them
• Apply usability engineering methods to identify
  tradeoffs and enumerate design guidelines

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Some Research Questions

• Where, how, and when should the abstract
  information be displayed in the VE?
• In what form should the information be displayed?
  
• How can interrelationships between the spatial
  and abstract information be represented?

Bowman, Doug, North, Chris, Chen, J., Polys, N.,
Pyla, P., Yilmaz, U., (2003) Information-Rich
Virtual Environments Theory, Tools, and Research
Agenda. Proc. Virtual Reality Software and
Technology (VRST)
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IRVEs and Multiple Coordinated Views

• Users can index to and from perceptual and
  abstract information through brushing and
  linking. Snap2Diverse uses RMI and
  RemoteSharedMemory to link VE and InfoVis
  toolkits
• DIVERSE is an multi-platform, open-source VR
  toolkit diverse.sourceforge.net
• Snap-Together Visualization is a free,
  componentized toolkit for information
  visualization infovis.cs.vt.edu

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Snap2Diverse IRVE

• Multiple-Views approach
• Abstract info in separate Infovis apps
• hanging picture, HUD
• Brushing and linking
• Layout location display-fixed location
  separate, opaque application does not reside
  within the scenegraph.
• Layout Association Hanging Picture is visually
  implicit not localized in the environment
  brushing and linking.

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Snap
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Video
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Event Support

• Diverse as a Snap-able component
• Unique data record Ids for 2 way communication
• Event communication (e.g. select, load)

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Application Cheminformatics
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Usability Evaluation Summary

• Snap2Diverse as tested is
• high-threshold for learnability
• high-ceiling for functionality
• Users were able to brush link to solve tasks
• In most cases, users chose suitable
  visualizations to recover the information
  required for the finding and comparing tasks
• Given a choice, users tended to recover
  information from the VE rather than the InfoVis
  window
• Xwand is a moded interface and switching between
  2D and 3D navigation and selection was not
  intuitive.

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Lessons Learned

• Simple events provide glue to support complex
  functionality
• Benefits of exposing VE scenegraphs to external
  events enabling technology must be extended
• Benefits of composable and integrated information
  spaces
• Designers must consider tasks and the knowledge
  required for completion (ie Sutcliffe and
  Faraday, Shneiderman)

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Current Work PathSim

• http//www.vbi.vt.edu/pathsim
• Paper to be presented at Web3D 2004
• Polys, N., Bowman, D., North, C., Laubenbacher,
  R., Duca, K., (2004). PathSim Visualizer An
  Information-Rich Virtual Environment for Systems
  Biology Proceedings of Web3D 2004, ACM SIGGRAPH.

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Future Work

• IRVE Testbed construction
• Controlled experiments and usability evaluations
  to identify the significant design dimensions and
  techniques for integrated information spaces.
• Identify tradeoffs, guidelines, and design
  patterns for this class of problems.
• Propose future X3D standard components
• Annotation (labels, metadata)
• Compositing (HUD, ApplicationTexture)

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Thanks and Happy Hacking!

• Nicholas F. Polys
• npolys_at_vt.edu

Department of Computer Science Center for Human
Computer Interaction Virginia Polytechnic
Institute and State University