Communicative Information Visualizations: How to make data more understandable by the general public

Although data visualizations have been around for centuries and are encountered frequently by the general public, existing evidence suggests that a significant portion of people have difficulty understanding and interpreting them. It might not seem like a big problem when a reader misreads a weather map and finds themselves without an umbrella in a rainstorm, but for those who lack the means, experience, or ability to make sense of data, misreading a data visualization concerning public health and safety could be a matter of life and death. However, figuring out how to make visualizations truly usable for a diverse audience remains difficult. In my thesis, I examined three areas where altering current practices may help make data visualizations more understandable and impactful in the future

Probe-based visual analysis of geospatial simulations

This work documents the design, development, refinement, and evaluation of probes as an interaction technique for expanding both the usefulness and usability of geospatial visualizations, specifically those of simulations. Existing applications that allow the visualization of, and interaction with, geospatial simulations and their results generally present views of the data that restrict the user to a single perspective. When zoomed out, local trends and anomalies become suppressed and lost; when zoomed in, spatial awareness and comparison between regions become limited. The probe-based interaction model integrates coordinated visualizations within individual probe interfaces, which depict the local data in user-defined regions-of-interest. It is especially useful when dealing with complex simulations or analyses where behavior in various localities differs from other localities and from the system as a whole. The technique has been incorporated into a number of geospatial simulations and visualization tools. In each of these applications, and in general, probe-based interaction enhances spatial awareness, improves inspection and comparison capabilities, expands the range of scopes, and facilitates collaboration among multiple users. The great freedom afforded to users in defining regions-of-interest can cause modifiable areal unit problems to affect the reliability of analyses without the user’s knowledge, leading to misleading results. However, by automatically alerting the user to these potential issues, and providing them tools to help adjust their selections, these unforeseen problems can be revealed, and even corrected

Basketmaker II Warfare and Fending Sticks in the North American Southwest

Direct physical evidence and rock art, including head skin trophies, indicate that violence linked to warfare was prevalent among the preceramic farmers of the North American Southwest known as Basketmakers. The degree of intergroup conflict indicates that Basketmakers may have needed defense against atlatl darts. In the early 1900s archaeologists suggested that distinctive wooden artifacts served this purpose. Despite resembling Puebloan rabbit sticks, the first to report these S-shaped and flattened sticks with longitudinal facial grooves thought that hunting was not their purpose. Yet the sticks appear singularly inadequate for the task of atlatl dart defense. I evaluate the suggested function of these artifacts and their relationship to warfare in Basketmaker II society. I consider multiple lines of evidence to analyze stick function: ethnography, experiments, use-wear, bioarchaeological markers of violence, and prehistoric art. I conducted a detailed analysis of almost 500 prehistoric flat curved sticks and radiocarbon dated 63 of them. Some of the documented variation in this artifact class is geographically patterned, likely based on learning networks, but dating reveals that much of it is linked to an evident shift in tool function. The sticks become more like ethnographic rabbit sticks through time and exhibit a corresponding increase in traces of such a use. Yet, there are those with damage that seems indicative of atlatl dart defense. My experiments showed that a defender can knock aside atlatl darts from close range with these sticks. Some tribes in South America perform a similar feat in a duel-like context and Diego de Landa may have observed an analogous ritual in the 1500s among the Yucatec Maya. The fending hypothesis is most logical in a duel. Many of the analyzed prehistoric sticks come from a known Puebloan war god shrine in central New Mexico, where an informant identified one as symbol of membership in a warrior society. In addition to prowess as a man killer, war society membership in the distant past might have involved atlatl duels where dart defense with a stick displayed great skill and courage. Basketmakers may have considered S-shaped sticks as an ancient symbol of warrior status

Cultural Resources Management Plan: Black Mesa Ranger Station

The Black Mesa Ranger Station on the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests in northern Arizona, serves as the administrative site for the Black Mesa Ranger District. The station was established in 1949 after Forest Service personnel determined that the current ranger station located in Black Canyon was no longer suitable as an administrative site. The Black Mesa Ranger Station was developed over a period of several years spanning from the 1950s to the 1960s to form the administrative site that it is today. Due to the station’s construction and development over 50 years ago, many of the buildings and features now represent a historic component within the ranger station that is in need of evaluation for the National Register of Historic Places. Also, the establishment of the ranger station prior to the enactment of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 led to the development of the site within the footprint of a prehistoric Mogollon/Ancestral Puebloan archaeological site with no mitigation measures observed. In order to maintain and ensure the Black Mesa Ranger Station can continue to function as the administrative site for the district, a cultural resource management plan is required in accordance with the National Historic Preservation Act and consultation with the Arizona State Historic Perseveration Office and Tribes with cultural affiliation to the Black Mesa Ranger District. A total of 20 historic buildings associated with the Ranger Station were recorded as well as artifacts and features that are part of the prehistoric component. The site represents that location of a historic Forest Service Ranger Station, that is still currently in use, and prehistoric temporary habitation and resource processing site. The overall site was evaluated for the National Register of Historic Places based on both its historic and prehistoric components. The historic components were determined not eligible for the National Register while the prehistoric components are eligible for the National Register

Online avatar based interactions

The gridWorld project attempts to utilize 3D to develop an online multi-user visual chat system. GridWorld address ideas of how conversations in a virtual environment can be facilitated and enhanced by an abstract visual interface design. The visual interface was developed from research and examination of existing ideas, methodologies and application for development of user-embodiment, chat/virtual space, and interface useability towards the visualization of communication

Parting A Read Sea Of Images: An Exploration Of Field Dependent-Independent Responses To Minimalist, Pictographic And Infographic Data Displays

ABSTRACT Western society reflects an âeikoncentric eraâ when contemporary instruction has become image -centered. Textbooks, journals, popular media as well as computer-based and web- based instructional media are filled by pictures that are intended to accomplish learning. Imagery is widely believed to represent an efficient, understandable method for relaying information and clarifying instruction for nearly all learners. However, those who subscribe to the adage âa picture is worth a thousand wordsâ often fail to acknowledge individual differences in visual comprehension and cognition. The field dependent-independent (FDI) cognitive style describes individual learner differences that can thwart visual learning. Information graphics are among the frequently used types of imagery that portray data. There is little empirical evidence to guide their design, and their creation is often based on intuition or opinion. This study researched the ways FDI learners comprehend and aesthetically assess minimalist information graphics, pictograms and infographics. Those participants who represented the most extreme field-dependent or field-independent learners were invited to participate in a two-part study. An instrument named the Comparative Information Graphic Test (CIG-T) was developed for testing comprehension of and perceived aesthetic efficacy, value and preference for minimalist information graphics, pictograms and infographics by FDI learner

An interdisciplinary, cross-lingual perspective

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, German

The role of constituents in multiword expressions

Multiword expressions (MWEs), such as noun compounds (e.g. nickname in English, and Ohrwurm in German), complex verbs (e.g. give up in English, and aufgeben in German) and idioms (e.g. break the ice in English, and das Eis brechen in German), may be interpreted literally but often undergo meaning shifts with respect to their constituents. Theoretical, psycholinguistic as well as computational linguistic research remain puzzled by when and how MWEs receive literal vs. meaning-shifted interpretations, what the contributions of the MWE constituents are to the degree of semantic transparency (i.e., meaning compositionality) of the MWE, and how literal vs. meaning-shifted MWEs are processed and computed. This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary selection of seven papers on recent findings across linguistic, psycholinguistic, corpus-based and computational research fields and perspectives, discussing the interaction of constituent properties and MWE meanings, and how MWE constituents contribute to the processing and representation of MWEs. The collection is based on a workshop at the 2017 annual conference of the German Linguistic Society (DGfS) that took place at Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany