Dynamic virtual environments pose growing challenges for users who must manage attention across competing visual elements, where distractors can divert focus from relevant objects in these scenarios. Because human attention functions as a filter, it is shaped by competing influences from bottom-up salience and top-down relevance. We explore the salience and relevance of objects and introduce suppression-based visual filtering mechanisms, implemented through Dim and Blur visual filters at Weak and Strong intensity levels. A controlled abstract virtual environment with colorful moving objects was used to evaluate these against Baseline (no filtering) across nine varied salience-relevance situations, involving 38 participants in visual search and sustained monitoring tasks. Results showed that visual suppression enhanced participants’ attention over Baseline, with Dim outperforming Blur, Strong exceeding Weak, and Dim-Strong achieving superior performance overall. These findings imply the principle of attention redistribution and offer insights for domains involving objects with varying salience and relevance.

This work explores the implications of using thermal channels alongside physical tokens on a glove to create a wearable data physicalization that offers both public and private data displays. Encoding data using thermal sensations offers privacy and can complement a physical-visual display by representing one additional dimension. We provide thermal feedback using a nichrome wire, with temperature regulated by transistors controlled by a microcontroller. 3D-printed detachable structures (tokens) were developed to create a physical-visual display alongside the private thermal display. Our work also discusses different ways of representing human-centred data thermally, as well as real-world use cases such as self-reflection, empathy building and collaborative sensemaking.

There are many problem domains where users have to pay attention to a series of targets. In this article, we evaluated visual cues to support attention in dynamic situations in virtual environments. Three immersive visualizations (Emphasis, Deemphasis, Emphasis+Deemphasis) have been examined across four different attention types (sustained, alternating, divided, and selective attention) to support the user's attention on targets. Emphasis highlights targets of interest using outlines; Deemphasis removes details with masks, and Emphasis+Deemphasis combines both techniques. An experiment with 34 participants examined the cues through four scenarios that required different attention types in dynamic situations. Results indicated that while Emphasis supported significantly faster reactions in most attention types, the other two visual cues showed superiority across other measurements. Although evaluated in a virtual environment, the findings offer guidance for designing visual cues in other dynamic situations that involve different attention types.

Immersive embodiment holds great promise for motor skill acquisition, however the design and effect of real-time visual guidance across perspectives and body representations remain underexplored. This study introduces a puppet-inspired visual feedback framework that uses continuous visual linkages - line, color, and thickness cues - to externalize spatial deviation and scaffold embodied learning. To evaluate its effectiveness, we conducted a controlled virtual reality experiment (N = 40) involving gesture imitation tasks with fine (sign language) and gross (aviation marshalling) motor components, under first- and third-person viewpoints. Results showed that color-based guidance significantly improved imitation accuracy, short-term learning, and perceived embodiment, especially in finger-based and first-person settings. Subjective assessments (NASA-TLX, Motivation, IPQ, Embodiment) confirmed improvements in presence, agency, and task engagement.

While visual channels (e.g., color, shape, size) have been explored for visualizing data in data physicalizations, there is a lack of understanding regarding how to encode data into physical material properties (e.g., roughness, hardness). This understanding is critical for ensuring data is correctly communicated and for potentially extending the channels and bandwidth available for encoding that data. We present a method to encode ordinal data into roughness, validated through user studies. In the first study, we identified just noticeable differences in perceived roughness from this method. In the second study, we 3D-printed proof of concepts for five different multivariate physicalizations using the model. These physicalizations were qualitatively explored (N=10) to understand people’s comprehension and impressions of the roughness channel. Our findings suggest roughness may be used for certain types of data encoding, and the context of the data can impact how people interpret roughness mapping direction.

As technology grants us superhuman powers, looking into what the future may hold is no longer science fiction. Artificial Intelligence and Mixed Reality technologies can allow users to see what the future may hold. In this paper, we present our work evaluating visualizations of future predictions in the Football domain. We explore the problem space, examining what a future may be. Three visualizations—2 Arrow Lines, 5 Arrow Lines, and Heatmap—are introduced as representations that show both individual predictions of movement (2 Arrow Lines and 5 Arrow Lines) and more generalized predictions (Heatmap). Whilst football is used as an example domain in this work, the visualizations and findings aim to generalize to other scenarios that contain trajectory information. Two VR studies $(2 \times \mathrm{n}=24)$ examined the visualizations in both simple/complex, timed/non-timed, and short/long-range viewing situations. Results show Heatmap as the most effective and preferred by the vast majority of participants. Findings offer insights into future visualization, serving as visual heuristics beyond the realm of sports and into the real world.

Data physicalisations afford people the ability to directly interact with data using their hands, potentially achieving a more comprehensive understanding of a dataset. Due to their complex nature, the representation of graphs and networks could benefit from physicalisation, bringing the dataset from the digital world into the physical one. However, no empirical work exists investigating the effects physicalisations have upon comprehension as they relate to graph representations. In this work, we present initial design considerations for graph physicalisations, as well as an empirical study investigating differences in comprehension between virtual and physical representations. We found that participants perceived themselves as being more accurate via touch and sight (visual-haptic) than the graphical-only modality, and perceived a triangle count task as less difficult in visual-haptic than in the graphical-only modality. Additionally, we found that participants significantly preferred interacting with visual-haptic over other conditions, despite no significant effect on task time or error.

In augmented reality (AR), gesture/hand-based interactions are becoming more common place over tangible user interfaces (TUIs) and physical controllers. Major concerns regard portability and battery-life with TUIs and physical controllers in an AR environment. For a TUI or physical controller to be usable ”on the go” and in the field, they need to be compact such that they can be easily deployable. Subsequently, it is desirable to be low-energy or powerless, such that the device remains functional after long periods. In this paper, we present our initial design towards a powerless, passive controller that leverages the optical camera of a AR head-mounted display (such as the Hololens or Magic Leap) for tracking. We discuss related work, design motivations, high and low fidelity designs, opportunistic/adaptable input modalities, and use cases. We conclude with propositions for future work.

In this work, we explore if the immersion afforded by Virtual Reality can improve the cognitive integration of information in Cinematic Virtual Reality (CVR). We conducted a user study examining participants' cognitive activities (recall performance and cortical response) when consuming visual information of emotional and emotionally neutral scenes in a non-CVR environment (i.e. a monitor) versus a CVR environment (i.e. a head-mounted display). Cortical response was recorded using electroencephalography. The results showed that participants had greater early visual attention with neutral emotions in a CVR environment, and showed higher overall alpha power in a CVR environment. The use of CVR did not significantly affect participants' recall performance.

Despite the technological advances in building design, visualizing 3D building layouts can be especially difficult for novice and expert users alike, who must take into account design constraints including line-of-sight and visibility. Using CADwalk, a commercial building design tool that utilizes floor-facing projectors to show 1:1 scale building plans, this work presents and evaluates two floor-based visual cues for assisting with evaluating line-of-sight and visibility. Additionally, we examine the impact of using virtual cameras looking from the inside-out (from user’s location to objects of interest) and outside-in (looking from an object of interest’s location back towards the user). Results show that floor-based cues led to participants more correctly rating visibility, despite taking longer to complete the task. This is an effective tradeoff, given the final outcome (the building design) where accuracy is paramount.

Data videos are a highly impactful method of communication and are becoming a prevalent medium for communicating information. While the majority of current research focuses on the cinematic aspects of data videos, very little is known about the narrative methodologies involved. This paper presents our insights derived from an initial exploration of this area. We present a taxonomy based on the analysis of 70 existing data videos examining their narrative and visual approaches. We propose that our taxonomy can be used to explain the characteristics or design of data videos. Applying this taxonomy, we present our observations, including the trend of popular technologies applied in current data videos, the under-utilization of promising methods, and highlight research opportunities in the field.

This paper introduces GeoGate, an Augmented Reality tabletop system that extends the Space-Time Cube and utilizes a ring-shaped tangible user interface to explore correlations between entities in multiple location datasets. We demonstrate GeoGate in the context of the maritime domain, where operators seek to find geo-temporal associations between trajectories recorded from a global positioning system, and light data extracted from night time satellite images. GeoGate utilizes a tabletop system displaying a traditional 2D map in conjunction with a Microsoft Hololens to present a single view of the data with a novel Augmented Reality extension of the Space-Time Cube. To validate GeoGate, we present the results of a user study comparing GeoGate with the existing 2D approach used in a normal desktop environment. The outcomes of the user study show that GeoGate's approach reduces mistakes in the interpretation of the correlations between various datasets, while the qualitative results show that such a system is preferable for the majority of geo-temporal maritime tasks compared.

This paper showcases one way of how virtual reconstruction can be used in a courtroom. The results of a pilot study on narrative and spatial memory are presented in the context of viewing real and virtual copies of a simulated crime scene. Based on current court procedures, three different viewing options were compared: photographs, a real life visit, and a 3D virtual reconstruction of the scene viewed in a Virtual Reality headset. Participants were also given a written narrative that included the spatial locations of stolen goods and were measured on their ability to recall and understand these spatial relationships of those stolen items. The results suggest that Virtual Reality is more reliable for spatial memory compared to photographs and that Virtual Reality provides a compromise for when physical viewing of crime scenes are not possible. We conclude that Virtual Reality is a promising medium for the court.

This paper presents the results of two cognitive load studies comparing three augmented reality display technologies: spatial augmented reality, the optical see-through Microsoft HoloLens, and the video see-through Samsung Gear VR. In particular, the two experiments focused on isolating the cognitive load cost of receiving instructions for a button-pressing procedural task. The studies employed a self-assessment cognitive load methodology, as well as an additional dual-task cognitive load methodology. The results showed that spatial augmented reality led to increased performance and reduced cognitive load. Additionally, it was discovered that a limited field of view can introduce increased cognitive load requirements. The findings suggest that some of the inherent restrictions of head-mounted displays materialize as increased user cognitive load.