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In this paper we present a real-time dance visualization framework with the goal of easily mapping motion data from an accelerometer and a gyroscope into visual effects that users can compose and appropriate to their own dancing style. We used this framework to design a set of dance-tovisuals mappings through a user-centered approach. As a result, we conclude with a list of factors that help users to understand how to interact with a real-time dance visualization with no prior instructions. QC 20160407

We present preliminary results of the effect of Expo-Based Learning (EBL) applied to a course on information visualization. We define EBL as project-based learning (PBL) augmented with constructively-aligned large public demos [RTP14]. In this paper, we analyze the results of challenging and grading enrolled students to compete and present their projects publicly at an open student competition organized by a second university. We surveyed the students at the end of the course before the competition started and the end of the competition. We present the result of the impact of the student competition as it relates to the intended learning outcomes from the perspective of the students. QC 20160407

The increasingly ubiquitous touchscreen, from the smart phone to the treadmill, is a significant hurdle for blind individuals who cannot rely on their sense of touch for decoding its interface. Advances in smart phone screen readers, such as the iPhone’s Voice Over, have enabled blind users to effectively navigate touchscreens. While Voice Over efficiently outputs information, text input remained a challenge. To address this, we previously introduced BrailleTouch, a soft braille keyboard for efficient blind text entry on touchscreens. In this position paper, we present the tailored touch-based user experience design and evaluation techniques we developed for BrailleTouch which we have not previously discussed. QC 20160407

This paper presents an educational case study and its pedagogical lessons. It is a project-based course in advanced computer graphics and interaction, DH2413, conducted in the fall of 2012 at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. The students and the teacher, the author, learned through a constructivist approach. The students defined and researched the material covered in class through their theme selection of original research projects which consisted of interactive graphics systems. The students demonstrated, taught, and discussed with each other what they had learned. Finally, the students openly presented their work to hundreds of people in large public venues. The teacher s role was to design the learning environment, guide the research, provide indepth lectures on the research material chosen by the students, and organize and motivate the students to produce accountable results. In synthesis, the pedagogical lessons are: 1) learning means building with self-motivation, guidance, and accountability; 2) self-motivation means trust and independence; 3) guidance means asking for less, not more; and 4) accountability means public presentations of working systems. QC 20160426

QC 20160518

In this position paper, we describe our experience conducting a focus group for evaluating an Information Visualization system prototype. We concentrate on the method used and how it differs from traditional focus group methodology. Our position is that Information Visualization system prototypes provide exceptional grounds for customized focus group methodologies due to the exploratory nature of many of the tasks these systems are designed to support. QC 20160419

Many disciplines spend considerable resources studying behavior. Tools range from pen-and-paper observation to biometric sensing. A tool's appropriateness depends on the goal and justification of the study, the observable context and feature set of target behaviors, the observers' resources, and the subjects' tolerance to intrusiveness. We present two systems: Viz-A-Vis and Tableau Machine. Viz-A-Vis is an analytical tool appropriate for onsite, continuous, wide-coverage and long-term capture, and for objective, contextual, and detailed analysis of the physical actions of subjects who consent to overhead video observation. Tableau Machine is a creative artifact for the home. It is a long-lasting, continuous, interactive, and abstract Art installation that captures overhead video and visualizes activity to open opportunities for creative interpretation. We focus on overhead video observation because it affords a near one-to-one correspondence between pixels and floor plan locations, naturally framing the activity in its spatial context. Viz-A-Vis is an information visualization interface that renders and manipulates computer vision abstractions. It visualizes the hidden structure of behavior in its spatiotemporal context. We demonstrate the practicality of this approach through two user studies. In the first user study, we show an important search performance boost when compared against standard video playback and against the video cube. Furthermore, we determine a unanimous user choice for overviewing and searching with Viz-A-Vis. In the second study, a domain expert evaluation, we validate a number of real discoveries of insightful environmental behavior patterns by a group of senior architects using Viz-A-Vis. Furthermore, we determine clear influences of Viz-A-Vis over the resulting architectural designs in the study. Tableau Machine is a sensing, interpreting, and painting artificial intelligence. It is an Art installation with a model of perception and personality that continuously and enduringly engages its co-occupants in the home, creating an aura of presence. It perceives the environment through overhead cameras, interprets its perceptions with computational models of behavior, maps its interpretations to generative abstract visual compositions, and renders its compositions through paintings. We validate the goal of opening a space for creative interpretation through a study that included three long-term deployments in real family homes. QC 20160405

Work in ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence tends to focus on information access and task supportsystems informed by the office environment, which tend to view the whole world as an office, or on surveillancesystems that feature asymmetric information access, providing interpretations of activity to a central authority. Thealien presence provides an alternative model of ambient intelligence; an alien presence actively interprets abstractqualities of human activity (e.g. mood, social energy) and reports these interpretations, not to a central authority, butback to the user’s themselves in the form of ambient, possibly physical displays. The goal of an alien presence is nottask accomplishment and efficient access to information, but rather to open unusual viewpoints onto everydayhuman activity, create pleasure, and provide opportunities for contemplation and wonder. The design of an alienpresence is an interdisciplinary endeavor drawing on artificial intelligence techniques, art practices of creation andcritique, and HCI methods of design and evaluation. In this paper we present preliminary work on the TableauxMachine, an alien presence designed for the home environment, as well as discuss a number of general design issuesof alien presence including co-interpretation, authorship, richness of expression vs. system complexity, tensionsbetween viewing computation as a medium vs. as a model, issues of privacy, and evaluation. QC 20160407

We propose an appearance based machine learning architecturethat estimates and tracks in real time largerange head yaw given a single non-calibrated monoculargrayscale low resolution image sequence of the head. Thearchitecture is composed of five parallel template detectors,a Radial Basis Function Network and two Kalman filters.The template detectors are five view-specific images of thehead ranging across full profiles in discrete steps of 45 degrees.The Radial Basis Function Network interpolates theresponse vector from the normalized correlation of the inputimage and the 5 template detectors. The first Kalman filtermodels the position and velocity of the response vector infive dimensional space. The second is a running averagethat filters the scalar output of the network. We assume thehead image has been closely detected and segmented, that itundergoes only limited roll and pitch and that there are nosharp contrasts in illumination. The architecture is personindependentand is robust to changes in appearance, gestureand global illumination. The goals of this paper are,one, to measure the performance of the architecture, two,to asses the impact the temporal information gained fromvideo has on accuracy and stability and three, to determinethe effects of relaxing our assumptions. QC 20160426