Abstract

The talk addresses the question of how can we improving the interaction quality of visual data analysis tools. The design approach we have chosen is based on the theory of Reality-based Interaction and our Blended Interaction Framework. 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. Reality-based interaction techniques make use of this by aligning the operation of a digital system with our physical and social experiences from the real world. The goal is now to create user interfaces that seem familiar to the user. Different design solutions for visual data analysis tools will be presented. The technologies examined include multi-touch displays, deformable displays, tangible user interfaces, and head-mounted augmented reality displays. The presented design solutions address three crucial tasks for visual data analysis: navigating visual information spaces, filtering large amounts of data and, analyzing multi-dimensional data. Evaluations of these design solutions helped us to clarify the benefits and shortcomings of reality-based interaction for visual data analysis. The presented work contributes to closing the gap between visualization and interaction research and pointing out new ways to facilitate the operation of tools for visual data analysis.

Bio

Prof. Dr. Mag. Harald Reiterer holds a Magister (Mag.) degree (M.Sc. equivalent) from the University of Vienna in Computer Science and Economics. He defended his Ph.D. thesis in Computer Science at the University Vienna, Austria in 1991. In 1995 the University of Vienna conferred him the venia legendi (Habilitation) in Human-Computer Interaction. Prior to his appointment as full professor at the Computer and Information Science Department of the University of Konstanz in 2009, he was associate professor at the Department of Computer and Information Science of the University of Konstanz (1997-2009), assistant professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Vienna (1995-1997), and senior researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (1990-1995) in Bonn, Germany. His main research interests include different fields of Human-Computer Interaction, like Interaction Design, Usability Engineering, and Information Visualization.

https://hci.uni-konstanz.de/en/