Ambient InfoVis

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Ambient InfoVis

• CS 7450 - Information Visualization
• April 19, 2005
• John Stasko

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Objectives

• Systems so far
• What is their purpose or objective?
• High-level purpose or task

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Objectives

• Systems so far
• What is their purpose or objective?
• High-level purpose or task
• Analysis, Exploration, Learning

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Objectives

• Systems so far
• What is the primary challenge?
• Design characteristic

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Objectives

• Systems so far
• What is the primary challenge?
• Design characteristic
• Scale
• Provide easier access to a large data set

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Other Tasks for InfoVis

• Are there other high-level tasks that infovis can
  assist with?

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Other Tasks for InfoVis

• Are there other high-level tasks that infovis can
  assist with?
• Awareness, monitoring

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Idea

• People interpret images well (e.g., a pictures
  worth thousand words) so use visualization for
  information awareness

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Calm Technology

• Mark Weiser
• A calm technology will move easily from the
  periphery of our attention, to the center, and
  back.

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Ambient Displays

• Conveys low- to medium-priority information to
  people, while residing in the periphery of their
  attention
• Other terms sometimes used
• Peripheral display, notification system

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Ambient Displays

• Purpose
• Information awareness, perhaps monitoring
• Focus
• Aesthetics
• Visually pleasing enhancement to surroundings

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Ambient InfoVis

• InfoVis off the desktop
• Still visually encoding information, but not for
  analytic purposes
• Presenting the information in places where youre
  not doing desktop computing

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Examples

• Lets look at some examples of ambient displays
  or ambient information visualizations

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Dangling String

• Plastic spaghetti wire hanging from ceiling
• Hangs from motor in ceiling
• Electrically connected to ethernet cable sobits
  going by cause it tojiggle
• Created by artistNatalie Jeremijenko

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Ambient Room

• Use variety of physical objects in office to
  communicate the state of relevant information
• Hiroshi Ishiis group at MIT

Wisneski et alCoBuild 98
Video
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Karlsruhe Projects
Web awareness
Gellersen Schmidt Personal Technologies 99
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Lumitouch

• Touch one picture frame, the other lights up

Chang et alCHI 01 Extended Abstracts
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Information Percolator

• Fish tank with bubble controller
• Various messages can be sent in bubbles

Heiner et alUIST 99
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Busmobile, Weathermobile
Mankoff et alCHI 03
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Ambient Orb
Monitor stock marketdata, weather, etc.
www.ambientdevices.com
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Information Visualizations?

• Well, they are visually presenting information
• But perhaps not an emphasis on the information
• More about peripherality, calmness, aesthetics

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Other Styles

• Another set of techniques/systems focus less on
  aesthetics and more on the quality of information
  conveyance

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Ticker Displays

• Animated text strings (ticker, fade, roll, blast)
  typically in periphery of persons monitor

McCrickard et alIJHCS 03
Fitzpatrick et alCHI 99 Extended Abstracts
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Whats Happening/The Buzz
Screen-saver or projected display using collages
of images
Zhao StaskoAVI 02
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Sideshow

• Sidebar on edge of monitor
• Provides info on weather, traffic,presence,
  project status, etc.
• Can author new items
• From Microsoft

Cadiz et alCSCW 02
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Scope

• Unified display ofnotifications
• More urgent itemscloser to center
• Microsoft

Van Dantzich et alAVI 02
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Trade-off
Aesthetics
Utility
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Informative Art

• Electronic paintingsFlat panel LCDs hung on the
  wall
• Abstract art in which aspects of the picture
  change to signify underlying data values
• From Future Applications Lab, Viktoria Institute,
  Sweden

Redstrom et alDARE 00
Skog et alInfoVis 03
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Design Criteria

• Communicate useful information
• Blend in with surroundings and be appealing to
  look at
• Minimize animation Dont want to draw the eye
  too much

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Example
Mondrian
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Example
Andy Warhol
Cans gradually change from asparagus soup
totomato soup to signify upcoming event
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Lessons Learned

• Find info relevant to place where display is
  located
• Rate of change of info should be enough to
  promote relevance and draw interest
• Base visualization on artistic display, may
  support readability and promote comprehension
• Let features of info source affect visual
  encoding to improve memory of mapping

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Thoughts?

• Your views of system

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InfoCanvas

• Information ArtSimilar approach as in Viktoria
  project
• Electronic painting deployed on LCDs in the
  environment
• Focus User-driven views
• II group at Georgia Tech

Stasko et alUbicomp 04
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InfoCanvas
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Revisit Trade-off
Aesthetics
Utility
Informative art
InfoCanvas
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Objectives

• Personalized
• Display individuals personal information
• Flexible
• Variety of info sources and representations
• Consolidated
• Present multiple data items on one display
• Accurate
• Be clear, and highlight uncertainty
• Appealing
• Fun to use, aesthetically pleasing

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Example

• Time of day
• Weather
• Temperature
• Airfare cost
• Web image (golf)
• Stock market
• Traffic flow

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100 degrees
100
Slider
Temperature
Stock index
0 degrees
Time of day
9 am
6 pm
-100
Airfare
400
150
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Other Example Themes
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Transformations

• Slider
• Object moves along line
• Swapper
• Different images for different data states
• Appearance
• Image appears when condition is true
• Scaler
• Object changes size per data values
• Population
• Copies of object are displayed
• Display
• Text or image shown literally

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Implementation

• Java application
• Data harvester classes
• Painting specified through XML file
• System establishes data-gtvisual mapping and polls
  data sources to maintain current representation

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XML Driver File
ltobject type"active"gt ltdata
get"Weather" with"curtemp"gt
ltharvesterdatagtzip30332lt/harvesterdatagt
lt/datagt ltrepresentation type"slider"gt
ltimagegtgull_medium.giflt/imagegt
ltcoordinate type"start"gt
ltxgt640lt/xgt ltygt353lt/ygt
lt/coordinategt ltcoordinate
type"end"gt ltxgt640lt/xgt
ltygt5lt/ygt lt/coordinategt
ltdimensiongt
ltwidthgt92lt/widthgt ltheightgt31lt/heightgt
lt/dimensiongt
ltminvalgt20lt/minvalgt
ltmaxvalgt100lt/maxvalgt lt/representationgt
lt/objectgt
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Hardware
LCD bezel picture frame
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Information Conveyance

• Compare InfoCanvas to web portal to text display
  for acquisition and memory of different
  information sources
• Evaluate viewing at a glance
• Empirical study with 49 participants

Plaue et alGI 04
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Displays
Web portal
Text
InfoCanvas
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Information Nuggets
time of day temperature
forecast stock update
website updates baseball score update
weather forecast traffic conditions airfare
prices new emails news headline
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Methodology

• Within subjects
• Participants view display for 8 seconds then
  receive questionnaire about state of 10 items
• Vary order of topics on questionnaires
• Three trials with each display type

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Recall Questions
What is the current time of day? 432 AM
740 AM 320 PM 755 PM
What is the current news headline? Pair pleads
not guilty to embezzlement Pair pleads guilty to
obstruction charges Jury hung on money
launderer Couple found not guilty on
conspiracy charge
What is the lowest airfare price from Atlanta to
Los Angeles? 330 292 160 99
How many new emails were present? 22 16 1
0
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Results
Statistical Significance for InfoCanvas over
Web Portal Web Portal over Text-Based InfoCanvas
over Text-Based
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Results

• Statistically significantly more information
  recalled with InfoCanvas than portal and more
  with portal than text
• Pictures helped
• Participants were able to rapidly learn mappings
• Strange mappings didnt hurt

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Evaluation User Study

• Eight trial users ran system for a month
• Selected own information to monitor and designed
  own scene from an existing theme
• We implemented the view
• Picture frame monitor deployed in office

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Evaluation Dimensions

• Usefulness
• Personalization and flexibility
• Aesthetics
• Distraction
• Novelty and fun
• Summary impressions

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Results - General

• 6 themes chosen
• 6 17 visual elements
• Participants easily remembered mappings
• Swapper, slider, and image display were primary
  transformations
• More direct than abstract mappings, but
  significant amount of each
• 7 of 8 participants made changes at midpoint

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HW 7

• Visualization of evaluation data
• Static visual(s)
• Short explanation
• Due Thursday
• Bring one hardcopy

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Project Presentations

• Five on Tuesday
• Four on Thursday

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Upcoming

• Thursday
• Design discussion of HW 7
• Project discussion
• Next Week
• Project presentations
• Week 2
• Project reports due
• Final exam

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References

• Referenced papers