AESTHVIS:Main

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Project Name: Aesthetics and Visualization

Project Leader

Sheelagh Carpendale

Project Co-Leader

Lyn Bartram

Researchers

Theme Distribution

Project Description

Our research into the aesthetics of visualization and interaction will re-imagine the interface between people and technology, so that we can be more imaginative, more innovative, and less confined by technology. Our research expands the bounds of interactive visualization, exploring the aspects of aesthetics in data abstraction, representation, presentation and interaction in order to improve the competitive edge through enhanced appeal, in addition to usability. Our research into information aesthetics and the manifestation of aesthetics in interactive visualization recognizes the still growing importance of information in our society and looks to investigate the development of technologies that have appeal, are attractive and can operate in harmony with our daily lives, our interests, and our needs. This entails the exploration of the ways in which aesthetics enrich and refine information visualization and of the richer communicative scope of information, meaning and affect that aesthetic and artistic practice can enhance.

We will approach the exploration of the interplay between aesthetics and visualization through a variety of perspectives including research into expanding our understanding of the subtleties in maintaining balance during interactive manipulations and animations, towards understanding the fundamentals of motion in relationship to visualization, exploring use of simple and complex symmetries, and investigating the impact of aesthetics on the possibilities of presenting information visually in public spaces or casual settings (Card et al.,1998; Thomas & Cook,2005; Ware, 2004; Shneiderman, 1996). Aesthetics in visualization can be thought of as spanning a gamut from explicit to implicit, frequently exhibiting aspects of both. Explicit visualization involves the direct mapping of representational attributes to convey specific information properties. Use of representational attributes such as spatiality, colour, and repetition of necessity has a huge impact on aesthetics potentially influencing appeal, attractiveness and more practical aspects such as readability and interpretability. Implicit visualizations work with the experiential, using visual attributes to create environmental textures that can develop aesthetic effects or can evoke an impression. Research in this project will explore both the explicit and implicit aesthetics in visualization and the interplay between them. Since research focused on aesthetics in visualization is still nascent much of the initial work will concentrate on fundamentals.

Excellence of the Research

Development of Highly Qualified Personnel (HQP)

All researchers in this project conduct interdisciplinary and collaborative research that draws upon computer science and art and design as well as fundamentally incorporating research practices from cognitive science. All will be fully involved all stages of the design and research processes, becoming familiar with and practiced in interdisciplinary research.

Networking and Partnerships

We do think that aesthetics plays an important role in the success of and competitiveness of a product and the response we have had from our industry partners is clear that they also recognize this. However, we also recognize the interplay between aesthetics and visualization is complex and not just simply a matter of 'prettifying' visual interfaces. Thus we think that, at least initially, our results will be foundational and largely play into other research. This, coupled with the response we have had from other researchers in GRAND who have pointed out many exciting factors that relate to this research, indicates that there are many GRAND projects of interest and possible synergy.

Knowledge and Technology Exchange and Exploitation

Even though this is foundational research, industry is increasingly recognizing the importance of these topics to general success of products and thus is very interested. Study of aesthetics in software will have impact in terms of appeal, intelligibility and comprehension of visualizations, visual interfaces, games and animations. This research may lead to many ideas and directions that can have knowledge and technology exchange impact.

One practical result of this is that students graduating with these types of skills are in great demand. This includes the full range of expertise from students who are primarily computer scientists but are conversant in design practices to design students who have computer science savvy, and the full range of variations in between.

References to the Literature

Card, S., Mackinley, J., Shneiderman, B. eds. (1998). Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.

Thomas, J., Cook, K. (eds) (2005). Illuminating the Path: The Research and Development Agenda for Visual Analytics. National Visualization and Analytics Center.

Ware, C. (2004) Information Visualization: Perception for Design. Morgan Kaufmann, 2nd edition.

Shneiderman, B. (1996) The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations. Proc IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, 336343, IEEE Press.

Publications

Presentations



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