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Recent research has demonstrated the benefits of mixed realities for information visualisation. Often the focus lies on the visualisation itself, leaving interaction opportunities through different modalities largely unexplored. Yet, mixed reality in particular can benefit from a combination of different modalities. This work examines an existing mixed reality visualisation which is combined with a large tabletop for touch interaction. Although this allows for familiar operation, the approach comes with some limitations which we address by employing mobile devices, thus adding tangibility and proxemics as input modalities. published

Due to the increasing amount of data, visual data analysis has become more and more important. Visual data analysis makes it possible to use humans’ mental capabilities to quickly recognize visual patterns and find relevant information and make sense out of them. However, humans’ mental resources are not only required for the actual knowledge generation process but also for the operation of the analysis tools. The interaction with visualizations as data analysis tools is the focus of this dissertation. The fewer resources the user has to spend for operating the tool the more resources are left to interpret the visual representation of the data and make sense out of it. The research approach underlying this dissertation is based on the theory of Reality-based Interaction. Our physical and social environment is full of affordances, rules, and constraints that we are aware of and that frame our thinking and interaction with people and objects. A reality-based interaction technique makes use of this by aligning the operation of a digital system with our physical and social experiences from the real world. The goal is to create user interfaces that seem familiar to the user. In this dissertation user interfaces for the visual analysis of data based on reality-based visualization and interaction techniques are referred to as Reality-based Idioms. Reality-based Idioms often make use of novel input and output technologies, which, compared to traditional desktop systems, leverage the users’ preexisting and entrenched knowledge about the physical and social world to a much greater extent. The technologies examined in this dissertation include multi-touch displays, deformable displays, tangible user interfaces, and head-mounted augmented reality displays. The applied approach reflects the duality of Human-computer Interaction as a research and design discipline. In the sense of a research discipline, the thesis presents the theoretical foundations that explain when a user interface is perceived as reality-based and thus as familiar and summarizes them in the Model for Reality-based Idiom Design. In the sense of a design discipline, the practical applicability of the model is illustrated by three domain situations. These focus on navigating visual information spaces, filtering large amounts of data and, analyzing multi-dimensional data. In order to address these domain situations, the dissertation presents five Reality-based Idioms. The evaluation of these design artifacts helps to clarify the benefits of reality-based interaction for visual data analysis. With this approach, the work makes an important contribution to closing the gap between visualization and interaction research and to pointing out new ways to facilitate the operation of tools for visual data analysis. published

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Control rooms are facilities that serve as operations centers to supervise complex processes, e.g. in power plants or industrial production plants. In today’s control rooms operators mainly interact with these processes via desktop computers. From a cognitive point of view mediation of process dynamics by means of keyboard, mouse and computer displays is insufficient as perception is heavily reduced to the visual sense. Mounted on the framework Blended Interaction we present novel interaction styles that holistically address the domain specific requirements and support several forms of interaction in control room environments.

When considered through the lens of ubiquitous computing, interactive wall displays represent a promising infrastructure to provide information services. In the context of public libraries the design has to take particular account on two domain-speci c aspects. First, libraries are valued for their calm atmosphere. Thus, interaction has to occur in an unobtrusive manner. This is challenging as interactive displays need to catch assers-by's attention to communicate interactivity. Second, given that public libraries are demographically diverse places, a low barrier to entry has to be guaranteed to provide access to the largest possible number of visitors. With ADAPTIKs we present the concept of an interactive display that makes use of visual adaption as a means to unobtrusively attract the visitors' attention. The concept bases on a contextual analysis and illustrates how the visitors' position and body movements can be used to generate an adaptive silhouette that acts as a keyhole to an information landscape.

In this paper we suggest novel interaction and visualization techniques for a prospective ECML crisis room environment focusing on the analysis of social media data. For this purpose we describe both, concepts providing a Daily Newsflash and concepts for the preparation of Daily Reports referring to a selected incident or crisis situation. The Daily Newsflash is an overview of global incidents regarding humanitarian crises, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, conflicts, etc. Such a bulletin typical contains 1-5 international items with brief facts and 1-5 European items. For selected incidents or crisis situations a Daily Report is prepared. A typical Daily Report consists of one page usually providing a map, key facts, and a brief summary of the situation.

In diesem Beitrag wird Blended Interaction als neuartiger Ansatz zur ganzheitlichen Gestaltung von Arbeitsumgebungen für Operateure in Leitwarten vorgestellt. Hintergrund ist die Herausforderung einer stetig ansteigenden Komplexität der Mensch-Maschine-Schnittstelle. Leitbild bei der Konzeptentwicklung sind die Prinzipien der realitätsbasierten Interaktion, die sowohl den Operateur mit seinen natürlichen Fähigkeiten, als auch den situativen Kontext der Arbeitsumgebung hervorheben. Darüber hinaus werden Ergebnisse einer Evaluation mit Anwendern aus Verkehrsleitzentralen vorgestellt, in welcher ein möglicher Paradigmenwechsel hin zu neuen Interaktionsformen untersucht wird.

Proxemics in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) offer new prospects for the design of explicit and implicit interaction techniques to support multiple users and a concurrent navigation for zoomable user interfaces (ZUI). In this paper we describe a navigation concept for zooming and panning based on a multi-display environment using proxemic relations as input (e.g. a user’s location and orientation in physical space to manipulate a viewport). We hope to foster awareness of the topic and to inspire further discussion and research on proxemics in HCI. published

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