WEST: A Web Browser for Small Terminals

We describe WEST, a WEb browser for Small Terminals, that aims to solve some of the problems associated with accessing web pages on hand-held devices. Through a novel combination of text reduction and focus+context visualization, users can access web pages from a very limited display environment, since the system will provide an overview of the contents of a web page even when it is too large to be displayed in its entirety. To make maximum use of the limited resources available on a typical hand-held terminal, much of the most demanding work is done by a proxy server, allowing the terminal to concentrate on the task of providing responsive user interaction. The system makes use of some interaction concepts reminiscent of those defined in the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), making it possible to utilize the techniques described here for WAP-compliant devices and services that may become available in the near future

DOLPHIN: the design and initial evaluation of multimodal focus and context

In this paper we describe a new focus and context visualisation technique called multimodal focus and context. This technique uses a hybrid visual and spatialised audio display space to overcome the limited visual displays of mobile devices. We demonstrate this technique by applying it to maps of theme parks. We present the results of an experiment comparing multimodal focus and context to a purely visual display technique. The results showed that neither system was significantly better than the other. We believe that this is due to issues involving the perception of multiple structured audio sources

Autoplot: A browser for scientific data on the web

Autoplot is software developed for the Virtual Observatories in Heliophysics to provide intelligent and automated plotting capabilities for many typical data products that are stored in a variety of file formats or databases. Autoplot has proven to be a flexible tool for exploring, accessing, and viewing data resources as typically found on the web, usually in the form of a directory containing data files with multiple parameters contained in each file. Data from a data source is abstracted into a common internal data model called QDataSet. Autoplot is built from individually useful components, and can be extended and reused to create specialized data handling and analysis applications and is being used in a variety of science visualization and analysis applications. Although originally developed for viewing heliophysics-related time series and spectrograms, its flexible and generic data representation model makes it potentially useful for the Earth sciences.Comment: 16 page

A Single-Handed Partial Zooming Technique for Touch-Screen Mobile Devices

Despite its ubiquitous use, the pinch zooming technique is not effective for one-handed interaction. We propose ContextZoom, a novel technique for single-handed zooming on touch-screen mobile devices. It allows users to specify any place on a device screen as the zooming center to ensure that the intended zooming target is always visible on the screen after zooming. ContextZoom supports zooming in/out a portion of a viewport, and provides a quick switch between the partial and whole viewports. We conducted an empirical evaluation of ContextZoom through a controlled lab experiment to compare ContextZoom and the Google maps’ single-handed zooming technique. Results show that ContextZoom outperforms the latter in task completion time and the number of discrete actions taken. Participants also reported higher levels of perceived effectiveness and overall satisfaction with ContextZoom than with the Google maps’ single-handed zooming technique, as well as a similar level of perceived ease of use

Genome visualisation and user studies in biologist-computer interaction

We surveyed a number of genome visualisation tools used in biomedical research. We recognised that none of the tools shows all the relevant data geneticists who look for candidate disease genes would like to see. The biological researchers we collaborate with would like to view integrated data from a variety of sources and be able to see both data overviews and details. In response to this need, we developed a new visualisation tool, VisGenome, which allows the users to add their own data or data downloaded from other sources, such as Ensembl. VisGenome visualises single and comparative representations of the rat, the mouse, and the human chromosomes, and can easily be used for other genomes. In the context of VisGenome development we made the following research contributions. We developed a new algorithm (CartoonPlus) which allows the users to see different kinds of data in cartoon scaling depending on a selected basis. Also, two user studies were conducted: an initial quantitative user study and a mixed paradigm user study. The first study showed that neither Ensembl nor VisGenome fulfil all user requirements and can be regarded as user-friendly, as the users make a significant number of mistakes during data navigation. To help users navigate their data easily, we improved existing visualisation techniques in VisGenome and added a new technique CartoonPlus. To verify if this solution was useful, we conducted a second user study. We saw that the users became more familiar with the tool, and found new ways to use the application on its own and in connection with other tools. They frequently used CartoonPlus, which allowed them to see small regions of their data in a way that was not possible before

A flexible browsing framework for the Morpheus transform repository

Thesis (M. Eng.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-72).This thesis describes the design and implementation of a flexible browsing framework for the Morpheus project. The goal of the Morpheus project is to address the problem of heterogeneous information integration by providing a central repository for database transforms and data types, and storing metadata associated with each object, such as author, name, description, etc. One of the central features of Morpheus is the ability to explore the repository graphically by using this associated metadata. The framework described in this thesis provides an extensible interface for searching and browsing the repository visually, and comprises both back-end components that integrate with the repository as well as a full graphical user interface. The framework is designed to seamlessly integrate browsing and searching by means of user-defined search filters that restrict which results are displayed. We also introduce the concept of a named query, an object that associates a set of filters with a name. This allows the same set of results to be displayed in different ways by different browsers. Finally, three example browser implementations are presented to demonstrate the framework in use.by Tiffany Dohzen.M.Eng

Interactive visualization of information hierarchies and applications on the web

The visualization of information hierarchies is concerned with the presentation of abstract hierarchical information about relationships between various entities. It has many applications in diverse domains such as software engineering, information systems, biology, and chemistry. Information hierarchies are typically modeled by an abstract tree, where vertices are entities and edges represent relationships between entities. The aim of visualizing tree drawings is to automatically produce drawings of trees which clearly reflect the relationships of the information hierarchy. This thesis is primarily concerned with problems related to the automatic generation of area-efficient grid drawings of trees, interactively visualizing information hierarchies, and applying our techniques on Web data. The main achievements of this thesis include: 1. An experimental study on algorithms that produce planar straight-line grid drawings of binary trees, 2. An experimental study that shows the algorithm for producing planar straight-line grid drawings of degree-d trees with n nodes with optimal linear area and with user-defined arbitrary aspect ratio, works well in practice, 3. A rings-based technique for interactively visualizing information hierarchies, in real-time, 4. A survey of Web visualization systems developed to address the lost in cyberspace problem, 5. A separation-based Web visualization system that we present as a viable solution to the lost in cyberspace problem, 6. A rings-based Web visualization system that we propose as a solution to the lost in cyberspace problem