From Big Biological Data to Tangible Insights: Designing tangible and multi-display interactions to support data analysis and model building in the biology domain

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The goal of this research program is to design, develop, and evaluate tangible and multi-display interfaces that facilitate collaborative data analysis and model building within the biological domain, specifically in dealing with large and heterogeneous datasets. We propose that flexible visual representations that engage both visual and motor skills can enhance analyses by enabling humans to explore and interpret more deeply, and to discover unexpected features of their data. This is based on growing evidence from embodied cognition which underscores the importance of the perceptual and motor systems in our cognitive processes. In the area of tangible and embodied interaction (TEI), there has been increasing interest in using tangible interactions and large interactive surfaces to facilitate problem solving and discovery around large datasets. By engaging the motor and perceptual systems together, tangible and tabletop interfaces have proven to be an effective means of supporting collaboration, distributed cognition, and reflection. Although these interfaces show potential benefits for working with large biological datasets, there remain numerous challenges, including the diversity of users, the heterogeneity of the data, and the scale of the datasets. This program builds on an interdisciplinary collaboration with biology researchers at Ryerson University who study DNA replication and its relationship to cancer. Their work employs microscopy and DNA sequencing datasets, with the aim of identifying and modeling the structure and effects of DNA fork collapse, and of predicting its effects on the development of cancer. This problem is especially interesting from a TEI perspective as it exemplifies the challenges described above: large and heterogeneous datasets, and multiple researchers with diverse backgrounds. We propose to investigate what combinations of control and representation can most effectively support collaborative data analysis and model building tasks in this area. The contributions of the research program include furthering our understanding of how tangible and multi-display interaction techniques can support biological research practices; the design, development and evaluation of interface prototypes for specific biological problems; and the formulation of design guidelines that can aid TEI designers and researchers in building systems that support biological research and discovery. The program will advance the field of TEI by tackling problems that can benefit from TEI techniques but have not been given significant attention due to their scale and complexity. More broadly, the interpretation of large complex datasets is becoming increasingly critical to scientific advancement in Canada and globally, and this program will help to provide tools and techniques that can facilitate problem solving in data-intense areas within the health and medical domains.