This week three members of SACHI, Aaron Quigley, Miguel Nacenta and Umar Rashid are attending the 11th Advanced Visual Interfaces International Working Conference in Italy. “AVI 2012 is held on the island of Capri (Naples), Italy from May 21 to 25, 2012. Started in 1992 in Roma, and held every two years in different Italian towns, the Conference traditionally brings together experts in different areas of computer science who have a common interest in the conception, design and implementation of visual and, more generally, perceptual interfaces.”
We are presenting two full papers.
FatFonts: Combining the symbolic and visual aspects of numbers, Miguel Nacenta, Uta Hinrichs and Sheelagh Carpendale.
Abstract: “In this paper we explore numeric typeface design for visualization purposes. We introduce FatFonts, a technique for visualizing quantitative data that bridges the gap between numeric and visual representations. FatFonts are based on Arabic numerals but, unlike regular numeric typefaces, the amount of ink (dark pixels) used for each digit is proportional to its quantitative value. This enables accurate reading of the numerical data while preserving an overall visual context. We discuss the challenges of this approach that we identified through our design process and propose a set of design goals that include legibility, familiarity, readability, spatial precision, dynamic range, and resolution. We contribute four FatFont typefaces that are derived from our exploration of the design space that these goals introduce. Finally, we discuss three example scenarios that show how FatFonts can be used for visualization purposes as valuable representation alternatives.”
Read the FatFonts paper here. And also FatFonts features in the New Scientist.
and
The cost of display switching: A comparison of mobile, large display and hybrid UI configuration, Umar Rashid, Miguel Nacenta and Aaron Quigley
Abstract: “Attaching a large external display can help a mobile device user view more content at once. This paper reports on a study investigating how different configurations of input and output across displays affect performance, workload and subjective preferences in map, text and photo search tasks. Experimental results show that a hybrid configuration where visual output is distributed across displays is worst or equivalent to worst in all tasks. A mobile device-controlled large display configuration performs best in the map search task and equal to best in text and photo search tasks (tied with a mobile-only configuration). After conducting a detailed analysis of the performance differences across different UI configurations, we give recommendations for the design of distributed user interfaces.”
Read the Cost of Display Switching paper here.
Along with our colleagues in Nottingham and Birmingham we are chairing and organising the Workshop on Infrastructure and Design Challenges of Coupled Display Visual Interfaces PPD’12. The proceedings can be downloaded here. Finally, Aaron is the session chair for the Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality papers at AVI.

<!–Speaker: Tristan Henderson, SACHI
Date/Time: 1-2pm May 29, 2012
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews (directions)–>
Abstract:
The prevalence of social network sites and smartphones has led to many people sharing their locations with others. Privacy concerns are seldom addressed by these services; the default privacy settings may be either too restrictive or too lax, resulting in under-exposure or over-exposure of location information.
One mechanism for alleviating over-sharing is through personalised privacy settings that automatically change according to users’ predicted preferences. This talk will describe how we use data collected from a location-sharing user study (N=80) to investigate whether users’ willingness to share their locations can be predicted. We find that while default settings match actual users’ preferences only 68% of the time, machine-learning classifiers can predict up to 85% of users’ preferences. Using these predictions instead of default settings would reduce the over-exposed location information by 40%.
This work has mainly been performed by my PhD student Greg Bigwood, but Tristan will be presenting the paper (at the AwareCast Pervasive workshop) because Greg will be busy in St Andrews graduating!
About Tristan

The next TayViz meeting of the Tayside and Fife network for data visualisation will take place in St Andrews, (School of Computer Science), on Tuesday May 15th, at 6:30.
Read all the details in this page.
Sign up for the TayViz google group (it is free and everybody is welcome to join).
Send any questions and e-mail to miguel.nacenta@st-andrews.ac.uk

We are pleased to announce and welcome Uta Hinrichs who will be joining us in SACHI in the School of Computer Science in the University of St Andrews from August of this year as a research fellow. Originally from Lübeck in Germany, Uta is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary in Canada. She is working at the Innovis Group under supervision of Sheelagh Carpendale. Her research interests include interaction with large displays in public spaces, information visualization, graphic design, and art.
She will be working with Professor Quigley on a number of projects including our JISC project (Trading Consequences) and SFC Smart Tourism project (SMART), and with Dr Nacenta on the LADDIE project. In addition to many other fun and new projects in time!
We are looking forward to Uta coming and we wish her well on her final months as a graduate student.

Everyone in SACHI would like to congratulate Miguel was being awarded a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant on Gaze-Based Perceptual Augmentation called DeepView. Miguel will be recruiting a PhD student on this project, so please contact him if you are interested in a position on this.
The analysis and visualisation of increasing amounts of data is pervasive and indispensable in many of the crucial activities for a countless number of professions. Moreover, the amount and types of data that is available for visual inspection and analysis keeps growing. The DeepView project proposes the use of gaze-tracking technology (i.e., hardware and software that can judge where the user is looking at within a screen) to extend the basic perceptual abilities of the user. The project will iterate on prototypes and empirical evaluations to explore the space of gaze-contingent manipulations that can improve perceptual performance in common tasks such as colour differentiation, visual search, and maxima finding. The project will also seek to apply the results of the initial phases to applied scenarios in other disciplines other than Human Computer Interaction and Information Visualisation.
We all wish Miguel as this project starts later this year. If you are interested in this research please contact him directly or keep an eye on this page for future blog posts.

The current issue of the New Scientist features an article called “Font for digits lets numbers punch their weight” on Miguel’s work on FatFonts which says, “The symbols we use to represent numbers are, mathematically speaking, arbitrary. Now there is a way to write numbers so that their areas equal their numerical values. The font, called FatFonts, could transform the art of data visualisation, allowing a single infographic to convey both a visual overview and exact values.
‘Scientific figures might benefit from this hybrid nature because scientists want both to see and to read data,’ says Miguel Nacenta, a computer scientist at the University of St Andrews, UK, who developed the concept with colleagues at the University of Calgary, Canada.”
Congratulations to Miguel and his colleagues on having their work highlighted in this venue.

<!–Speaker: Helen Purchase, University of Glasgow
Date/Time: 1-2pm May 15, 2012
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews (directions)–>
Abstract:
The visual design of an interface is not merely an ‘add-on’ to the functionality provided by a system: it is well-known that it can affect user preference, engagement and motivation, but does it have any effect on user performance? Can the efficiency or effectiveness of a system be improved by its visual design? This seminar will report on experiments that investigate whether any such effect can be quantified and tested. Key to this question is the definition of an unambiguous, quantifiable characterisation of an interface’s ‘visual aesthetic’: ways in which this could be determined will be discussed.
About Helen:
Dr Helen Purchase is Senior Lecturer in the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow. She has worked in the area of empirical studies of graph layout for several years, and also has research interests in visual aesthetics, task-based empirical design, collaborative learning in higher education, and sketch tools for design. She is currently writing a book on empirical methods for HCI research.

Next week, in the context of the Psychology-Computer Science collaboration grant (PSY/CS), Manuel Spitchan from Psychology will be giving a workshop on eye-movements and eye-tracking.
Please, check the details here:

Eye Movement and Eye-tracking Workshop

<!–Speaker: Umer Rashid, University of St Andrews, UK
Date/Time: 1-2pm May 1, 2012
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews (directions)–>
Abstract:
A very apparent drawback of mobile devices is that their screens do not allow for the display of large amounts of information at once without requiring interaction, which limits the possibilities for information access and manipulation on the go. Attaching a large external display can help a mobile device user view more content at once. We report on a study investigating how different configurations of input and output across displays affect task performance, subjective workload and preferences in map, text and photo search tasks.  After conducting a detailed analysis of the performance differences across different UI configurations, we provide recommendations for the design of distributed user interfaces.
About Umer:
Umer Rashid has conducted my PhD research under the supervision of Prof. Aaron Quigley in the School of Computer Science at University of St Andrews. The goal of his research is to look into the ways mobile interaction with external large displays can complement the inherent capabilities of each device, thus resulting into an enhanced user experience.
 

<!–Speaker: Helen Ai He, University of Calgary, Canada
Date/Time: 1-2pm April 10th, 2012
Location: 1.33a Jack Cole, University of St Andrews (directions)–>
Abstract:
Global warming, and the climate change it induces, is an urgent global issue. One remedy to this problem, and the focus of this talk, is to motivate eco-behaviors by people. One approach is the development of technologies that provide real-time feedback of energy usage (e.g. in the form of watts, monetary cost, or carbon emissions).
However, there is one problem – most technologies use a “one-size-fits-all” solution, providing the same feedback to differently motivated individuals at different stages of readiness, willingness and ableness to change. I synthesize a wide range of motivational psychology literature to develop a motivational framework based on the Stages of Change (aka Transtheoretical) Model. If you are at all interested in motivation, behaviour change, or designing technologies to motivate behaviour change, this talk may be useful for you.
About Helen:
Helen Ai He completed her Masters in Computer Science (specializing in HCI) at the University of Calgary, Canada, under the supervision of Dr. Saul Greenberg and Dr. Elaine May Huang.
She worked as a software developer in SMART Technologies for a year and a half, and plans to begin an HCI PhD in September 2012. She is particularly interested in topics such as personal informatics, cross-cultural research, technology design for developing regions, and sustainable interaction design. Aside from research, she enjoys doing karate, climbing, artwork, and eating!