Spatial Interaction for Immersive Mixed-Reality Visualizations

Growing amounts of data, both in personal and professional settings, have caused an increased interest in data visualization and visual analytics. Especially for inherently three-dimensional data, immersive technologies such as virtual and augmented reality and advanced, natural interaction techniques have been shown to facilitate data analysis. Furthermore, in such use cases, the physical environment often plays an important role, both by directly influencing the data and by serving as context for the analysis. Therefore, there has been a trend to bring data visualization into new, immersive environments and to make use of the physical surroundings, leading to a surge in mixed-reality visualization research. One of the resulting challenges, however, is the design of user interaction for these often complex systems. In my thesis, I address this challenge by investigating interaction for immersive mixed-reality visualizations regarding three core research questions: 1) What are promising types of immersive mixed-reality visualizations, and how can advanced interaction concepts be applied to them? 2) How does spatial interaction benefit these visualizations and how should such interactions be designed? 3) How can spatial interaction in these immersive environments be analyzed and evaluated? To address the first question, I examine how various visualizations such as 3D node-link diagrams and volume visualizations can be adapted for immersive mixed-reality settings and how they stand to benefit from advanced interaction concepts. For the second question, I study how spatial interaction in particular can help to explore data in mixed reality. There, I look into spatial device interaction in comparison to touch input, the use of additional mobile devices as input controllers, and the potential of transparent interaction panels. Finally, to address the third question, I present my research on how user interaction in immersive mixed-reality environments can be analyzed directly in the original, real-world locations, and how this can provide new insights. Overall, with my research, I contribute interaction and visualization concepts, software prototypes, and findings from several user studies on how spatial interaction techniques can support the exploration of immersive mixed-reality visualizations.Zunehmende Datenmengen, sowohl im privaten als auch im beruflichen Umfeld, führen zu einem zunehmenden Interesse an Datenvisualisierung und visueller Analyse. Insbesondere bei inhärent dreidimensionalen Daten haben sich immersive Technologien wie Virtual und Augmented Reality sowie moderne, natürliche Interaktionstechniken als hilfreich für die Datenanalyse erwiesen. Darüber hinaus spielt in solchen Anwendungsfällen die physische Umgebung oft eine wichtige Rolle, da sie sowohl die Daten direkt beeinflusst als auch als Kontext für die Analyse dient. Daher gibt es einen Trend, die Datenvisualisierung in neue, immersive Umgebungen zu bringen und die physische Umgebung zu nutzen, was zu einem Anstieg der Forschung im Bereich Mixed-Reality-Visualisierung geführt hat. Eine der daraus resultierenden Herausforderungen ist jedoch die Gestaltung der Benutzerinteraktion für diese oft komplexen Systeme. In meiner Dissertation beschäftige ich mich mit dieser Herausforderung, indem ich die Interaktion für immersive Mixed-Reality-Visualisierungen im Hinblick auf drei zentrale Forschungsfragen untersuche: 1) Was sind vielversprechende Arten von immersiven Mixed-Reality-Visualisierungen, und wie können fortschrittliche Interaktionskonzepte auf sie angewendet werden? 2) Wie profitieren diese Visualisierungen von räumlicher Interaktion und wie sollten solche Interaktionen gestaltet werden? 3) Wie kann räumliche Interaktion in diesen immersiven Umgebungen analysiert und ausgewertet werden? Um die erste Frage zu beantworten, untersuche ich, wie verschiedene Visualisierungen wie 3D-Node-Link-Diagramme oder Volumenvisualisierungen für immersive Mixed-Reality-Umgebungen angepasst werden können und wie sie von fortgeschrittenen Interaktionskonzepten profitieren. Für die zweite Frage untersuche ich, wie insbesondere die räumliche Interaktion bei der Exploration von Daten in Mixed Reality helfen kann. Dabei betrachte ich die Interaktion mit räumlichen Geräten im Vergleich zur Touch-Eingabe, die Verwendung zusätzlicher mobiler Geräte als Controller und das Potenzial transparenter Interaktionspanels. Um die dritte Frage zu beantworten, stelle ich schließlich meine Forschung darüber vor, wie Benutzerinteraktion in immersiver Mixed-Reality direkt in der realen Umgebung analysiert werden kann und wie dies neue Erkenntnisse liefern kann. Insgesamt trage ich mit meiner Forschung durch Interaktions- und Visualisierungskonzepte, Software-Prototypen und Ergebnisse aus mehreren Nutzerstudien zu der Frage bei, wie räumliche Interaktionstechniken die Erkundung von immersiven Mixed-Reality-Visualisierungen unterstützen können

Automated Visual Discourse Synthesis: Coherence, Versatility, and Interactivity

In this proposal, we present comprehensive and systematic approaches of building systems that can automatically generate coherent visual discourse for interactive environments. A visual discourse refers to a series of connected visual displays. A coherent visual discourse requires smooth transitions between displays, consistent designs within and among displays, and effective integration of various components. While our main research goal is to develop approaches to automatically create coherent, versatile, and interactive visual discourse, we also emphasize integrating these approaches into a general framework to provide a reference model in which a specific system is considered an instantiation of the framework. In other words, the framework should consist of a knowledge base, an inference engine, a visual realizer, and an interaction handler. As a consequence, not only can a general framework serve as a template from which a specific generation system can be instantiated,but the framework also can be used as a base for comparing or evaluating different systems. We concentrate on the basic issues involved in developing comprehensive and systematic approaches to ensure a visual discourse's coherence, versatility, and interactivity. In particular, To ensure coherence, we have established a set of comprehensive design criteria to measure both expressiveness and effectiveness of a visual discourse. To provide versatility, we address the design of visual discourse for heterogeneous information. Within such discussions, heterogeneous information refers to both quantitative and qualitative, or static and dynamic information. In addition, we are also concerned with characterizing and employing different visual media and a wide variety of visual techniques. To support interaction, we integrate many conventional user interface metaphors and styles into visual discourse design and explore reactive planning approaches to provide proper response to user interactions. To establish the framework, we identify various knowledge sources and determine effective knowledge representation paradigms in constructing the knowledge base. We emphasize the efficiency, usability, and flexibility issues in modeling the inference engine. We are concerned with portability and parallelization issues in building the visual realizer, and we also take into account interaction capabilities for interactive environments. We describe a system called IMPROVISE (Illustrative Metaphor Production in Reactive Object-oriented VISual Environments) that serves as a proof-of-concept prototype. IMPROVISE is built based on our framework, aiming to automatically generate coherent visual discourse for various application domains in interactive environments. IMPROVISE has been used in two testbed application domains to demonstrate its generality and flexibility. Examples from both domains will be given to illustrate IMPROVISE's generation process and to identify the future research areas