Micro visualizations for pervasive and mobile data exploration

这个法德联合项目的目标是研究非常小的数据可视化，微观可视化，在只能为数据表示专门提供最小渲染空间的显示环境中。特别是，我们将研究在给定小数据和复杂数据的情况下，人类对微观可视化的感知和相互作用。健身手环、智能手表或手机等小型移动设备对数据可视化的需求日益增长，这推动了我们的研究。考虑到这种使用环境，我们特别关注在行走、乘坐车辆或跑步时使用可视化的情况。目前尚不清楚我们对桌面大小的可视化的知识在多大程度上转移到了涉及最小显示空间、不同视角和移动显示的环境中。尽管过去几年显示出对显示墙、桌子、平板电脑或较小程度的手机的可视化的研究兴趣越来越大，但我们对小型或移动显示的关注是新颖和及时的，同时支持现实的使用场景。最终，我们的研究旨在使人们能够在典型的工作环境之外使用可视化技术，从而推动“超越桌面”可视化技术的研究议程。示例使用场景包括显示步数或心率的健身带、显示海拔分布的手持式GPS跟踪器，或用于应急响应场景的手机可视化。该建议建立并扩展了两个现有的研究流：数据字形，专注于研究多属性维度的数据表示，以及字尺度可视化，如迷你图，专注于嵌入文本文档中的小可视化。在这个项目中，我们将这些类型的小型可视化一起放在“微观可视化”的保护伞下。具体地说，我们将微观可视化定义为缺乏或具有一组有限的参考结构，如标签、数据轴或网格线，并且具有几平方厘米的小物理足迹的小规模可视化。微观可视化可以像基于小单位的可视化一样简单，如电池指示器，但也包括多维可视化，如星形、小地理可视化，甚至小网络可视化。虽然微观可视化对于移动可视化环境是必不可少的，但我们对其总体视觉和交互设计空间或人们解释微观可视化的能力知之甚少。我们将通过提出一个共同的框架，进行实证研究来了解人们在运动中解释这些可视化的能力，并开发一个软件工具包来帮助从业者为新兴的移动和可穿戴显示器开发微观可视化。总而言之，我们的目标是为可视化的普遍使用铺平道路，从而更好地、更广泛地理解我们周围的复杂世界。

The goal of this joint Franco-German project is to study very small data visualizations, micro visualizations, in display contexts that can only dedicate minimal rendering space for data representations. In particular, we will study human perception of and interaction with micro visualizations given small as well as complex data. The increasing demand for data visualizations on small mobile devices such as fitness bands, smart watches, or mobile phones drives our research. Given this usage context, we focus in particular on situations where visualizations are used "on the go", while walking, riding a vehicle, or running. It is still unclear to which extent our knowledge of desktop-sized visualizations transfers to contexts that involve minimal display space, diverse viewing angles, and moving displays.While the last years have shown an increasing research interest in visualization for display walls, tables, tablets, or to a lesser extent mobile phones, our focus on small or moving displays is novel and timely while supporting realistic usage scenarios. Ultimately, our research aims to empower people to use visualizations outside a typical work environment furthering the research agenda of "beyond-the-desktop" visualizations. Example usage scenarios include fitness bands showing step counts or heart rates, hand-held GPS trackers showing elevation profiles, or mobile phone visualizations used in emergency response scenarios.This proposal builds on and expands two existing research streams: data glyphs, which focus on studying data representations of multi-attribute dimensions, and word-scale visualizations such as sparklines, which focus on small visualizations embedded in text-documents. In this project, we consider these types of small visualizations together under the umbrella of "micro visualizations".Specifically, we define micro visualizations as small-scale visualizations that lack or have a limited set of reference structures such as labels, data axes, or grid lines and have a small physical footprint of a few square centimeters. Micro visualizations can be as simple as small unit-based visualizations such as a battery indicator but also include multi-dimensional visualizations such as star glyphs, small geographic visualizations or even small network visualizations. Although micro visualizations are essential to mobile visualization contexts, we know surprisingly little about their general visual and interaction design space or people's ability in interpreting micro visualizations. We will address this gap by proposing a common framework, conducting empirical studies to understand people's abilities to interpret these visualizations while in motion, and by developing a software toolkit to aid practitioners in developing micro visualizations for emerging mobile and wearable displays.In summary, we aim at paving the way for a pervasive use of visualizations and thus a better and broader understanding of the complex world around us.