In about…. one hour, I’ll be defending my Master’s thesis. I’m really looking forward to the opporunity to discuss my research with a group of interesting people and hear their thoughts on the work that I’ve done. Here’s to the summit bid!
- From PantherModem@Flickr
The following is the abstract for my MSc. thesis titled Lark: Using Meta-visualizations for Coordinating Collaboration. Unfortunately, university regulations state that thesis abstracts must be no more then 150 words, and this one is well over 400. So, before this passage gets significantly reduced, here’s the extended version of what my thesis is about.
Real-world information continues to grow in size and complexity, making the analysis and interpretation of this data an ever increasing challenge. Both information visualization and collaborative team work have been suggested as important factors in addressing these information complexity challenges. Information visualization has the potential to provide different ways of examining and exploring the data. Collaborative data analysis can combine the analytic power of multiple individuals, with the possibility of including varying types and levels of expertise, potentially leading to increased quality of solutions and discoveries. However, while considerable research is being conducted in both the areas of Information Visualization and Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), comparatively less research examines the interplay between them. This is especially true for co-located collaborative scenarios.
In this thesis I focus on supporting small groups of people working together in a synchronous co-located environment who make use of information visualizations in their analysis process. Within this space I am particularly interested in mixed-focus collaboration—team work characterized by frequent changes in collaboration styles, which span the range from loosely coupled, individual work to closely coupled, group work. To facilitate mixed-focus collaboration, I investigate how to support changing collaboration styles within a collaborative information visualization workspace. To this end, I identify three concepts—temporal flexibility, spatial flexibility, and scoped interaction—which play an important role in this type of work scenario.
These concepts form the basis for my research challenges and structure the design and implementation of Lark: a coordinated multiple views visualization environment where the relationships and connections between individual views are illustrated through an integrated meta-visualization. The meta-visualization is modeled after the visualization pipeline and provides several distinct stages in which group members can coordinate their interactions–these stages are identified as Collaboration Coordination Points (CCPs) Making the relationships and connections between the individual views visually explicit supports workspace awareness and the CCP can help empower group members with the freedom to work in concert or independently. Furthermore, Lark shows how a coherent visualization collaboration interaction environment with direct visual and algorithmic support for the coordination of data analysis actions over shared large displays.
In this thesis I present a novel approach to the coordination of interactions between multiple people working together in a co-located collaborative visualization environment. The coordination of interactions can help facilitate mixed-focus collaborative work by supporting both individual and group work, and the transitions between these different levels of collaborative coupling. By investigating the synergy of information visualization and collaborative team work, this thesis demonstrates promising strategies for addressing present day information complexity challenges.
The supplementary video accompanying the i-Loupe and iPodLoupe paper, Getting Practical with Interactive Tabletop Displays: Designing for Dense Data, “Fat Fingers,” Diverse Interactions, and Face-to-Face Collaboration [ PDF ], is now available on YouTube:
Here’s a sneak peak of Stephen Voida‘s Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces 2009 (ITS ’09) paper titled: Getting Practical with Interactive Tabletop Displays: Designing for Dense Data, “Fat Fingers,” Diverse Interactions, and Face-to-Face Collaboration [ PDF | MOV ]. This paper will be presented in Banff, Alberta, Canada on Tuesday, November 24th, 2009 during the “Extending Basic Surface Interaction Capabilities” paper session from 10:30 – 12:30.
Visualization of the Lark paper from Wordle.net.
If you’re at Vis Week 2009 in Atlantic City this week, come check out my paper talk titled Lark: Coordinating Co-located Collaboration with Information Visualization. The talk is part of the InfoVis track, during the “Collaborative Visualization” session chaired by Jeff Heer on Thursday October 15, 2009 from 4:15 – 5:55 pm in the Blenheim room. You can check out a copy of the paper and accompanying video here.
Here’s a teaser screen shot of the system:
While working on the literature review for my thesis, I came across a paper concerning “visualization pipelines” which is widely cited in the scientific visualization community. The article is part of a book, published in 1990, and proved to be difficult to locate online. The friendly people at the U of C library where able to track this one down for me–interlibrary loans strike again!–and to avoid you the trouble, here is the article.
R.B.Haber and David A. McNabb, “Visualization Idioms: A Conceptual Model for Scientific Visualization Systems“, Visualization in Scientific Computing, IEEE, pp 74-93, 1990.
The camera ready version of my IEEE Information Visualization 2009 paper, “Lark: Coordinating Co-located Collaboration with Information Visualization“, has been submitted. Hooray!
This paper covers the research I have been doing for my masters, which I am now working on turning into a thesis. You can see a preview of the paper here [ PDF ] and the supplementary video here [ MOV | YouTube ].
The last few months I’ve been working on a simulation and visualization changes in plant abundance from the Concord, MA area. The project is especially interested in looking a the phylogenetic patterns that emerge as the floras handle temperature changes in their environment. The project is still under major development (read: I’m coding around the clock to finish things up and add some extra polish), but I wanted to give a seek peek of one of the interfaces for the visualization/simulation. Here’s a preview:
This interface is designed for use on a Microsoft Surface multi-touch digital tabletop.
OK, now back to work!
Web syndication is great. Instead of monitoring a publisher’s site for new updates, you can have something do the monitoring for you. Even better still, then something new comes along, well, it’ll let you know.
These systems tend to work best for publishers who update sporadically, yet where nonetheless, these updates are important; and for high throughput publishers, where utilizing a centralized feed reader can keep track of what you’ve read and what you haven’t. (It’s not quite as effective for ultra-high frequency sites, like FFFFOUND!, where you really don’t have much hope of looking at everything.)
An example of the former–infrequent yet important updates–are academic conference websites. Instead of trolling these sites for new information about paper submission guidelines or student volunteer sign ups (how many people have received the “SV Sign Up Now Available” email, only to discover that sign up has been opened for only a few hours and you’re number 241 on the waiting list), it would be far more productive to sign up to RSS feed and let those updates come to you.
One of the research projects that I’m involved with at the Scientists Discovery Room, is a visualization of biological classification, primarily the traditional Linnaean taxonomy (this is what you would have learnt in high school biology: Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species) and the modern phylogenetics (a classification model which groups species based on relatedness). Speaking on the history of biotic classification, The Tree of Life makes an interesting point about why the general public still clings on to Linnaean classification, despite it being a scientifically antiquated concept:
The ideas underlying the concept of the Great Chain of Being were overwhelmed by the concept and consequences of descent with modification. However, this idea of a linear ordering to nature explains why, among the essential concepts of modern science, those linked with phylogenetics are the least assimilated by the general public. Indeed, if the biological basis of a concept is difficult to grasp, it is often easier on our self-esteem to avoid learning it and to replace it by some nonscientific icon from the past.
Earlier this month, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts for a six month research fellowship at Harvard University. Needless to say, it was a tremendously busy semester leading up to the move, as I tried to complete as much of my thesis research as humanly possible so that I could switch to working on it part time for the next six months. Despite the frantic (and no doubt unsustainable) pace, it was easily the most productive time of my graduate degree. Having a concrete deadline was exceptionally motivating and in the end, it proved to be a hectic but rewarding time.
Here in Cambridge, things are in transition. It’s a bit of a leap to go from working full time (and then some) on a project that is nearing its auspicous finale, to a pristine and unrelated project, in a new work environment. With that said, you pick up things quickly. As the end of my third week at Harvard draws to a close, I’m beginning to feel acclimatized. I’m not totally there yet, but it’s coming.
I think a part of me is still holding on to the naïve idea that the “next thing” is going to be so much better and easier then what I am currently doing. As if all the stresses and challenges of the current day will be just a mere memory in this not-to-distant, consolatory future, where everything is conducted with grace and ease. (Forgive the hyperbole, as it is merely for illustrative purposes. And I shamelessly enjoy the dramatic flourish.) While I do believe that the future will be better, I’m beginning to learn that with these new affordances are not without their own cost; that there is an eternal struggle, who’s ante is continually increased.
Before coming here, my early ideas of this Ivy League school were tainted with this puerile idea. Papers don’t write themselves, but the potential for interacting and working with some truly remarkable researchers is termendous. The amount of effort to realize those collaborations is still non-trival, but the difference is the abundance of opportunity. That’s the real advantage, and that’s why in my mind things are better.
As an aside, if I was looking for a school where papers write themselves, I really should have gone to MIT: SCIgen truly does write the paper for you. Albeit, this is old news, but it still puts a smile on my face. And with any luck, I should be going on a tour of the Media Lab in the next little bit. I’m looking forward to that.
Twistori: “an ongoing social experiment, based on twitter. inspired by wefeelfine, hand-crafted by amy hoy and thomas fuchs.” Included in the Art Exhibit at InfoVis ’08.
Today at the “InfoVis for the Masses” paper session here at IEEE InfoVis 2007, a particularly interesting application was mentioned that provides meta data about your computer usage. Here’s their plug:
“Truth is, digital life is redefining the landscape of our social interactions, our activities, the meaning of community and even who we are. We build software products that explore new ways to help you understand, visualize, express and share your digital life. Some people like to describe what we do as ‘personal analytics’. That’s pretty good actually.”
The application is called Slife. Cool. A visualization of computer usage; in particular my usage. Over the course of the year/month/week/day, when was I spending the most time on my machine? How much time am I spending on what applications? and what I’m doing within those applications? What sort of insight can I discover into the computing activities that occupy so much of my time? Slife provides this kinds of “personal analytics” and visualizes this data. See, cool.
The crew at Slife Labs didn’t spot there. Enter Slifeshared, integrated with Slife:
“…[it] is an activity network for you and your friends where you share your live computer activities, such as videos you watch, music you listen to, web pages you find interesting and much more as a way to stay in touch.”
Slifeshare puts an Facebook-esque spin on an already exciting application. Again, cool.
Currently Slife is only available for OS X, but looks like a Windows beta version is available.
This last Tuesday evening I attended Science Café at the Unicorn to witness a scientific debate pub style! Science Café is the University of Calgary’s recent attempt to bring academia to the masses (err, the masses being as many people as can fit in a small corner of the Unicorn pub in downtown Calgary). The discussion for the evening was titled Hellooo! Anybody Else Out There? which centered around the question of whether or not extraterrestrial life exists in the universe. The two speakers on this topic were Dr. Russ Taylor from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the U of C and astronomer/producer Alan Dyer from the TELUS World of Science. Both speakers presented their opinions on the topic (pint in hand) in a argument then rebuttal format, after which the floor was opened to questions from the audience.
Russ Taylor began, stating that he believes that we are not alone in the universe, we aren’t special. As a race, humankind has been moving away from a heliocentric view of the universe and ourselves, coming to the concept that our earth and sun aren’t special, that in fact our planetary system is indeed common. The elements that we’re made of–hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen–are everywhere in the universe, ready to make life. In our case, the earth was formed about 4.57 billion years ago, with the first signs of life appearing at about 4 billion years (there are fossils from about 3.5 billion year ago). Looking at this history of 4 billion years, most of life during this period is largely microbial. Intelligent life however has a much shorter history and it’s development was much harder. What this means for extraterrestrial life, is that it may well exist and there are lots of places in the galaxy for it to survive (it’s estimated that there are 10′s of millions of planets in our galaxy that could support life), but will it be intelligent? The question was then raised, can intelligent life survive? If they exist, Taylor believes we’re going to find them.
Personally, I feel that this question, the survival of intelligent life, is extremely timely and well worth our consideration. Looking at the social, political, and environmental issues from the last hundred years, a pessimistic opinion might see the future of the human race to be rather bleak. Ecologically, the sustainability of the lifestyle of our species is undoubtedly suspect. Will our race, intelligent as we are, enjoy any reasonable amount of longevity?
After Taylor’s initial comments, the floor was turned over to Alan Dyer, who stated flat out: “Russ is wrong.” It is Dyer’s opinion that the existence of extraterrestrial life is commonly asked as question of faith: do you believe? The infamous poster of Fox Mulder’s comes to mind:
The point here is that, as a question of faith, are we still talking about science? But back to science for the moment, Dyer went on to state that the cosmic evidence suggests that life may be indeed common, but that’s microbes. Intelligent life is another matter. Now where there is water, there may also be life but that raises another question: is life easy to start? We don’t know. Thinking about animals here on earth, their existence is extremely fragile. There have been five major known mass extinctions in the earth’s history, so as resilient as life appears to be, maybe the earth is unique. There are a lot of things that need to happen to allow for the possibility of life, and when it does happen maybe they come and go, like ships passing in the night. It comes down to galactic time scales and maybe life is only present for a fleeting galactic moment. Coming back to the question of sustainability of intelligent life, what will be like in a thousand years? (Will we even make it that far?) Dyer’s concluding point is that there may well be other life in the galaxy, but this life may be well gone by the time we find it. “We aren’t the center of the universe, nor the center of time.”
Taylor’s rebuttal to the rebuttal was naturally dramatic: we’re resilient!! You can’t stop life! Taylor acknowledged the time argument, but skillfully countered rhetorically asking how long do civilizations last? As short as humankind’s history is, in that period we’ve moved from creating fire with sticks to building rocket ships and in the last one hundred years we have become a space faring race. Taylor furthered his rebuttal, arguing that with intelligence comes curiosity and with this curiosity we are going out into the galaxy. As Sir Arthur C. Clarke put it: either way, if we are alone or not, it’s an interesting answer. Indeed with the seeming popularity of microbial life, we may in fact be the aliens.
At this point in the evening, attention was turned to the audience who began bombarding Taylor and Dyer with questions. Things got a bit fragmented, but here’s what I pulled out. The famous Drake Equation was mentioned. Taylor suggested that the real miracle is the creation of the universe itself. In reference to S.E.T.I., Dyer mentioned that humankind isn’t broadcasting into the universe quite the same as we once where, that earth may be radio quite in 50 years; and radios have only been around for less than one hundred years at that. And lastly, a planet with O2 gas means life.
My concluding thoughts on the Science Café, is that it’s great. Bringing these kind of relatively accessible and interesting pseudo-academic debates to places like a pub in downtown Calgary is absolutely terrific. It’s intellectual entertainment, much like reading National Geographic or listening to Quirks and Quarks, and it was well worth the two hours on a Tuesday evening.
But to end on a culinary note, what I would not suggest is the Unicorn’s 8 oz. charbroiled swordfish steak. Took much sauce. Get the rib eye steak instead.
Location: Conference Internet Access Room, Hyatt Hotel, Baltimore
Local Time: 10:11 am
The first conference item that I attended this morning was a tutorial on Illustrative Visualization presented by Mario Costa Sousa from the University of Calgary. I was torn between the Geographic Visualization paper session and this tutorial, so I missed the majority of the first speaker in the tutorial but caught all of Mario’s overview and framework talk. It was a very nice talk and it makes me want to take the non-photorealistic rendering class that will be offered next semester.
After the break here, I’m off to see the Network Visualization session which includes Danny Holten‘s paper, Hierarchical Edge Bundles: Visualization of Adjacency Relations in Hierarchical Data, winner of the InfoVis 2006 Best Paper award. Judging from the paper preview, Holten’s talk is going to be excellent.
Location: Floh’s Laptop in the Atrium, Hyatt Hotel, Baltimore
Local Time: 3:37 pm
Woke up on the hotel floor today. Good thing I brought a Therm-a-Rest with me. Today is the first day of InfoVis ’06 and it was kicked off by Peter Eades’ keynote address. It was a interesting forty five minute talk titled “Algorithmics for Network Visualization”, so great if you where looking for a graph drawing talk, but awfully dull for a keynote address. What was the conference committee thinking when that talk was selected? You don’t start a conference with a lecture on specific subject matter, make it general, so that it appeals to everyone attending the conference. That’s pretty basic stuff.
I can hear Annie’s laugh. Time to go.
Just finished last minute packing for my four day trip to Baltimore for InfoVis 2006. This will be my second academic conference and I’m really really looking forward to it cause this one is dedicated to Info Vis research and it’s going to be great.
What I’m not too pumped for are the carry on restrictions currently in place for air travel. I bought my DS and iPod for times like these, but with TERRORISM and all these devices are just not allowed. [Update: I packed a DS, iPod, and DSLR in my carry on and was admitted through airport security without challenge. It's things like liquids that you can't bring on the flight, so get that coffee from Timmies after you go through security.] But I have plenty of reading material and my good friend Megan gave me this wicked cool graphic novel, Rising Star: Born in Fire, so I’ll be reading that all the way to Baltimore. Thanks Megan!
It’s time for bed now, but one last thing. PantherModem has been off-line since June when I moved from Ottawa to Calgary but it’s back and here to stay.
