Visualization is coming of age: with visual depictions being seamlessly integrated into documents and data visualization techniques being used to understand datasets that are ever-growing in size and complexity, the term visualization is becoming used in everyday conversations. But we are on a cusp; visualization researchers need to develop and adapt to today's new devices and tomorrows technology. Today, we are interacting with visual depictions through a mouse. Tomorrow, we will be touching, swiping, grasping, feeling, hearing, smelling and even tasting our data. The next big thing is multi-sensory visualization that goes beyond the desktop.

We present VASA, a visual analytics platform consisting of a desktop application, a component model, and a suite of distributed simulation components for modeling the impact of societal threats such as weather, food contamination, and traffic on critical infrastructure such as supply chains, road networks, and power grids. Each component encapsulates a high-fidelity simulation model that together form an asynchronous simulation pipeline: a system of systems of individual simulations with a common data and parameter exchange format. At the heart of VASA is theWorkbench, a visual analytics application providing three distinct features: (1) low-fidelity approximations of the distributed simulation components using local simulation proxies to enable analysts to interactively configure a simulation run; (2) computational steering mechanisms to manage the execution of individual simulation components; and (3) spatiotemporal and interactive methods to explore the combined results of a simulation run. We showcase the utility of the platform using examples involving supply chains during a hurricane as well as food contamination in a fast food restaurant chain.

We present a design study of the Deep Insights Anywhere, Anytime (DIA2) platform, a web-based visual analytics system that allows program managers and academic staff at the U.S. National Science Foundation to search, view, and analyze their research funding portfolio. The goal of this system is to facilitate usersʼ understanding of both past and currently active research awards in order to make more informed decisions of their future funding. This user group is characterized by high expertise yet not necessarily high literacy in visualization and visual analytics--they are essentially "casual experts"--and thus require careful visual and information design, including adhering to user experience standards, providing a self-instructive interface, and progressively refining visualizations to minimize complexity. We discuss the challenges of designing a system for "casual experts" and highlight how we addressed this issue by modeling the organizational structure and workflows of the NSF within our system. We discuss each stage of the design process, starting with formative interviews, participatory design, prototypes, and

Direct-touch tablets are quickly replacing traditional pen-and-paper tools in many applications, but not in case of the designer’s sketchbook. In this paper, we explore the tradeoffs inherent in replacing such paper sketchbooks with digital tablets in terms of two major tasks: tracing and free-hand sketching. Given the importance of the pen for sketching, we also study the impact of using a blunt-and-soft-tipped capacitive stylus in tablet settings. We thus conducted experiments to evaluate three sketch media: pen-paper, finger-tablet, and stylus-tablet based on the above tasks. We analyzed the tracing data with respect to speed and accuracy, and the quality of the free-hand sketches through a crowdsourced survey. The pen-paper and stylus-tablet media both performed significantly better than the finger-tablet medium in accuracy, while the pen-paper sketches were significantly rated higher quality compared to both tablet interfaces. A follow-up study comparing the performance of this stylus with a sharp, hard-tip version showed no significant difference in tracing performance, though participants preferred the sharp tip for sketching.

Understanding the intent behind human gestures is a critical problem in the design of gestural interactions. A common method to observe and understand how users express gestures is to use elicitation studies. However, these studies require time-consuming analysis of user data to identify gesture patterns. Also, the analysis by humans cannot describe gestures in as detail as in data-based representations of motion features. In this paper, we present GestureAnalyzer, a system that supports exploratory analysis of gesture patterns by applying interactive clustering and visualization techniques to motion tracking data. GestureAnalyzer enables rapid categorization of similar gestures, and visual investigation of various geometric and kinematic properties of user gestures. We describe the system components, and then demonstrate its utility through a case study on mid-air hand gestures obtained from elicitation studies.

We present PolyChrome, an application framework for creating web-based collaborative visualizations that can span multiple devices. The framework supports (1) co-browsing new web applications as well as legacy websites with no migration costs (i.e., a distributed web browser); (2) an API to develop new web applications that can synchronize the UI state on multiple devices to support synchronous and asynchronous collaboration; and (3) maintenance of state and input events on a server to handle common issues with distributed applications such as consistency management, conflict resolution, and undo operations. We describe PolyChrome's general design, architecture, and implementation followed by application examples showcasing collaborative web visualizations created using the framework. Finally, we present performance results that suggest that PolyChrome adds minimal overhead compared to single-device applications.

Juxtapoze is a clipart composition workflow that supports creative expression and serendipitous discoveries in the shape domain. We achieve creative expression by supporting a workflow of searching, editing, and composing: the user queries the shape database using strokes, selects the desired search result, and finally modifies the selected image before composing it into the overall drawing. Serendipitous discovery of shapes is facilitated by allowing multiple exploration channels, such as doodles, shape filtering, and relaxed search. Results from a qualitative evaluation show that Juxtapoze makes the process of creating image compositions enjoyable and supports creative expression and serendipity.

The advent of modern smartphones and handheld devices has given analysts, decision-makers, and even the general public the ability to rapidly ingest data and translate it into actionable information on-the-go. In this paper, we explore the design and use of a mobile visual analytics toolkit for public safety data that equips law enforcement agencies with effective situation awareness and risk assessment tools. Our system provides users with a suite of interactive tools that allow them to perform analysis and detect trends, patterns and anomalies among criminal, traffic and civil (CTC) incidents. The system also provides interactive risk assessment tools that allow users to identify regions of potential high risk and determine the risk at any user-specified location and time. Our system has been designed for the iPhone/iPad environment and is currently being used and evaluated by a consortium of law enforcement agencies. We report their use of the system and some initial feedback.

We present skWiki, a web application framework for collaborative creativity in digital multimedia projects, including text, hand-drawn sketches, and photographs. skWiki overcomes common drawbacks of existing wiki software by providing a rich viewer/editor architecture for all media types that is integrated into the web browser itself, thus avoiding dependence on client-side editors. Instead of files, skWiki uses the concept of paths as trajectories of persistent state over time. This model has intrinsic support for collaborative editing, including cloning, branching, and merging paths edited by multiple contributors. We demonstrate skWiki's utility using a qualitative, sketching-based user study.

Building a distributed user interface (DUI) application should ideally not require any additional effort beyond that necessary to build a non-distributed interface. In practice, however, DUI development is fraught with several technical challenges such as synchronization, resource management, and data transfer. In this paper, we present three case studies on building distributed user interface applications: a distributed media player for multiple displays and controls, a collaborative search system integrating a tabletop and mobile devices, and a multiplayer Tetris game for multi-surface use. While there exist several possible network architectures for such applications, our particular approach focuses on peer-to-peer (P2P) architectures. This focus leads to a number of challenges and opportunities. Drawing from these studies, we derive general challenges for P2P DUI development in terms of design, architecture, and implementation. We conclude with some general guidelines for practical DUI application development using peer-to-peer architectures.