Beyond Detection: Investing in Practical and Theoretical Applications of Emotion + Visualization

Emotion is a dynamic variable that modulates how we perceive, reason about, and interact with our environment. Recent studies have established that emotion’s influence carries to data analysis and visualization, impacting performance in ways both positive and negative. While we are still in the infancy of understanding the role emotion plays in analytical contexts, advances in physiological sensing and emotion research have raised the possibility of creating emotion-aware systems. In this position paper, we argue that it is critical to consider the potential advances that can be made even in the face of imperfect sensing, while we continue to address the practical challenges of monitoring emotion in the wild. To underscore the importance of this line of inquiry, we highlight several key challenges related to detection, adaptation, and impact of emotional states for users of data visualization systems, and motivate promising avenues for future research in these areas

Processes of Creating Infographics for Data Visualization

This paper presents a brief overview of infographics, together with study which was originated to discover what motivates people to design infographics and what are the components of the creative process. Section 2 outlines the experiment. Section 3 presents obtained results. Section 4 presents conclusions and future directions in studies of processes in designing infographics, outlines the important problem for further research

Cost data visualisation

Decision making using the methodologies and analysis generated by the cost engineering function is widely considered good practice across industry, as a way to support both technical engineering decisions and fundamental business decisions. One persistent challenge for the professional cost engineer is to present cost data and information to decision makers and a mix of audiences. Data visualisation is therefore an important element to ensure that data is presented in a clear, effective and convenient format to ensure sufficient insights can be gathered. This work explores different data presentation and visualisation approaches. This review highlighted this topic as a research gap that this paper is novel in addressing. The review findings are further explored through a series of semi-structured interviews with experts in relevant fields to establish effective data visualisation methods, along with the challenges associated with presenting cost data to a variety of audiences. Chart embellishments are one explored area of potential to increase the engagement and understanding of visualisations

The effects of graphical fidelity on player experience

Graphical assets in video games have become increasingly complex over the years, but little is known about their effect on player experience (PX). In this paper, we present results of a controlled study with 48 participants comparing how abstract and stylized graphics influence player experience in casual games. Our results show that high-fidelity graphics result in a more positive impression of the game. However, we also show that many effects are only present in the game with a more challenging mechanic. This shows that casual games can be compelling and enjoyable to play despite simplistic graphics, suggesting that small game developers and researchers need not focus on elaborate visuals to engage players. Copyright © 2013 ACM

Are crossings important for drawing large graphs?

Reducing the number of edge crossings is considered one of the most important graph drawing aesthetics. While real-world graphs tend to be large and dense, most of the earlier work on evaluating the impact of edge crossings utilizes relatively small graphs that are manually generated and manipulated. We study the effect on task performance of increased edge crossings in automatically generated layouts for graphs, from different datasets, with different sizes, and with different densities. The results indicate that increasing the number of crossings negatively impacts accuracy and performance time and that impact is significant for small graphs but not significant for large graphs. We also quantitatively evaluate the impact of edge crossings on crossing angles and stress in automatically constructed graph layouts. We find a moderate correlation between minimizing stress and the minimizing the number of crossings. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.National Science Foundation, NSF: CCF-1115971National Science Foundation, NSF: DEB-105357

Interactive infographics and news values

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Digital Journalism [PUBLICATION DETAILS], copyright @ Taylor & Francis, available online at http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/21670811.2013.841368.This study is concerned with the news values and working practices that inform the creation of interactive infographics in UK online news. The author draws upon organisational theory in journalism studies, and considers how conventional journalistic news values compare with best practice as espoused in different literatures within this field. A series of open-ended, depth interviews with visual news journalists from the UK national media were undertaken, along with a short-term observation case study at a national online news publisher. Journalistic and organisational norms are found to shape the selection, production, and treatment of interactive graphics, and a degree of variation is found to exist amongst practitioners as to definitions of quality in this field. Some news stories are considered to be better suited to rendering in interactive form than others. The availability of “big data” does not drive decision-making in itself, but some numbers are considered more newsworthy than others. Budgetary constraint drives practice and limits potential in this field. Risk aversion, embodied in various forms; from the use of templates, to a perceived need to avoid audience complaint, is found to dampen experimentation. Detailed audience research was found to inform the choice of methods used in data visualisation at one national news producer. This warrants further investigation as to how audiences engage with news interactives, and what the framing of news in certain (preferred) data visualisation formats means in terms of how news is understood

Presentation Design and Retention

Organizations often utilize presentations at meetings to disseminate standardized knowledge that organizations desire for their employees to retain. Thus, the way that these presentations are designed is likely to be important, in that they should be designed in such a way to maximize the retention of information. The current research explored three different presentation designs often used for formal information dissemination intended to distribute standardized knowledge in organizations: Infographics, concise PowerPoint, and extensive PowerPoint. An ANOVA indicated a slight but not statistically significant difference in the retention of information across the different presentation designs. It was concluded that using a visual presentation helps with the retention of information, regardless of the design of presentation