Integrating Data Visualization and the Physical World

我的团队的研究将考察通过允许人们收集、可视化数据并与环境中的数据交互以指导日常决策的系统，在物理世界中设置数据可视化的新机会。数据驱动的思维和分析工具越来越普遍。然而，在大多数领域，可视化和分析仍然发生在桌面上，远离他们旨在解决的现实世界空间、系统和问题。在个人健康、工作场所优化和城市设计等应用领域，桌面系统和工作的真实性质之间的这种间接性可能会使其难以利用数据和分析。这限制了数据为决策提供信息的可能性，并降低了观众将环境背景与数据驱动的洞察力联系起来的程度。幸运的是，无处不在的低功耗显示器、动态投影地图系统和混合现实耳机等新兴技术有可能直接在最相关的环境中改变这种动态显示数据。我的研究团队将利用这些新的显示技术来创建新的情景数据可视化系统，帮助最终用户将数据合并到他们自己独特的环境和工作流程中。我们将重点关注三个核心主题：主题1-设计与物理环境集成的新的情景数据可视化。我的团队将为无处不在的显示器、投影地图系统和混合现实耳机创建新的情景可视化设计，解决遮挡、数据密度、时空间接性等问题，以及其他使重用现有桌面可视化技术变得困难的已知挑战。主题2-探索访问和探索情景可视化的新交互技术。我的团队将设计和测试新的交互技术，利用可视化与真实世界对象和空间之间的联系-允许观众通过导航和与真实世界的位置和对象交互来控制可视化。主题3-研究创建和定制情景可视化的新创作范例。我的团队将设计、开发和测试新的界面，允许最终用户根据其独特的环境设计可视化。特别是，我们将重点介绍允许最终用户将数据集和可视化链接到物理环境的方法，以快速创建有助于解决特定现实问题的表示法。拟议的研究结果将有助于释放现实世界空间中数据可视化的潜力，导致新的现场分析方法，可以改善各种行业的决策。拟议工作的技术和经验成果都有可能在未来5-10年内推动加拿大的技术创新，为初创企业和与情景可视化工具相关的其他技术投资创造新的机会。

My team's research will examine new opportunities for situating data visualization in the physical world via systems that allow people to collect, visualize, and interact with data in-context to inform everyday decision making. Data-driven thinking and analysis tools are increasingly ubiquitous. Yet in most domains, visualization and analysis still happen on the desktop, far from the real-world spaces, systems, and problems they aim to address. In application areas like personal health, workplace optimization, and urban design, this indirection between desktop systems and the real-world nature of work can make it hard to capitalize on data and analysis. This limits the potential for data to inform decision making and reduces the extent to which viewers can link environmental context to data-driven insights. Fortunately, emerging technologies like ubiquitous low-power displays, dynamic projection mapping systems, and mixed reality headsets have the potential to change this dynamic-surfacing data directly in the environments where it is most relevant. My research team will harness these new display technologies to create new situated data visualization systems that help end-users incorporate data into their own unique environments and workflows. We will focus on three core themes: Theme 1 - Designing new situated data visualizations that integrate with physical environments. My team will create new situated visualization designs for ubiquitous displays, projection mapping systems, and mixed reality headsets, addressing issues with occlusion, data density, spatio-temporal indirection, and other known challenges which make it difficult to re-use existing desktop visualization techniques. Theme 2 - Exploring new interaction techniques for accessing and exploring situated visualizations. My team will design and test new interaction techniques that leverage the connections between visualizations and real-world objects and spaces-allowing viewers to control visualizations by navigating and interacting with the real-world locations and objects. Theme 3 - Examining new authoring paradigms for creating and customizing situated visualizations. My team will design, develop, and test new interfaces that allow end-users to design visualizations tailored to their unique environments. In particular, we will focus on approaches that allow end-users to link datasets and visualizations to physical environments to quickly create representations that help solve specific real-world problems. The results of the proposed research will help unlock the potential for data visualizations in real-world spaces, leading to new in-situ analysis approaches that could improve decision-making in a variety of industries. Both the technical and empirical outcomes of the proposed work have the potential to drive technology innovation in Canada over the next 5-10 years, creating new opportunities for start-ups and other tech investment related to situated visualization tools.