As visualization literacy and its implications gain prominence, we need effective methods to prepare students for the variety of visualizations in an increasingly data-driven world. Recently, the potential of comics has been recognized in various data visualization contexts, including educational settings. We describe the development of a workshop in which we use our "comic construction kit" as a tool for students to understand various data visualization techniques through an interactive creative approach of creating explanatory comics. We report on our insights from holding eight workshops with high school students and teachers, university students, and lecturers, aiming to enhance the landscape of handson visualization activities that can enrich the visualization classroom. The comic construction kit and all supplemental materials are open source under a CC-BY license and available at https://fhstp.github.io/comixplain/vis4schools.html.

Abstract In this paper, we describe a proof-of-concept for the implementation of a wearable auditory biofeedback system based on a sensor-instrumented insole. Such a system aims to assist everyday users with static and dynamic exercises for gait rehabilitation interventions by providing auditory feedback based on plantar pressure distribution and automated classification of functional gait disorders. As ground reaction force (GRF) data are frequently used in clinical practice to quantitatively describe human motion and have been successfully used for the classification of gait patterns into clinically relevant classes, a feed-forward neural network was implemented on the firmware of the insoles to estimate the GRFs using pressure and acceleration data. The estimated GRFs approximated well the GRF measurements obtained from force plates. To distinguish between physiological gait and gait disorders, we trained and evaluated a support vector machine with labeled data from a publicly accessible dataset. The automated gait classification was then sonified for auditory feedback. The potential of the implemented auditory feedback for preventive and supportive applications in physical therapy was finally assessed with both expert and non-expert participants. A focus group revealed experts’ expectations for the proposed system, while a usability study assessed the clarity of the auditory feedback to everyday users. The evaluation shows promising results regarding the usefulness of our system in this application area.

Interactive installations face several challenges when used in public or semi-public contexts, such as users not noticing interactivity, or refraining from interacting due to the fear of social embarrassment. Several interaction models proposing solutions to these issues have been established over the years. However, most of these models focus on single-surface installations, which have to be approached for interaction. When the users’ own devices (ODs) are included in the installation, though, the interaction focus shifts. To determine the influence of the ODs on the applicability of existing interaction models, we developed a multi-device quiz game, the “Weisskunig Quiz”, according to these models. The installation was deployed in a real museum exhibition and tested in two qualitative evaluations with random museum visitors and a school class. We describe our design approach, reflect on the found differences, and propose an extension for single-surface interaction models by incorporating the users’ own devices.

Air traffic control officers (ATCOs) are specialized workers responsible to monitor and guide airplanes in their assigned airspace. Such a task is highly visual and mainly supported by 2D visualizations. In this paper, we designed and assessed an application for visualizing air traffic in both orthographic (2D) and perspective (3D) views. A user study was then performed to compare these two types of representations in terms of situation awareness, workload, performance, and user acceptance. Results show that the 3D view yielded both higher situation awareness and less workload than the 2D view condition. However, such a performance does not match the opinion of the ATCOs about the 3D representation.

In the context of the 3DUI Contest promoted by the IEEE VR 2018, we propose 3D interaction techniques that address three distinct tasks in a virtual environment setup: climbing a ladder, controlling a quadcopter in a first-person view flight, and building a tower by stacking a series of objects. The interaction techniques were developed so the player, our 3D-athlete, has control over the events in each task, following metaphors that facilitate the use of the interface, and having status and spatial awareness supported by clear feedback cues. Thus, the player should be able to execute the tasks with precision and agility.

We looked up to elements present in speech articulation to introduce the proactive haptic articulation as a novel approach for intercommunication. The ability to use a haptic interface as a tool for implicit communication can supplement communication and support near and remote collaborative tasks in virtual and physical environments. In addition, the proactive articulation can be applied during the design process, including the user in the construction of more dynamic and optimized vibrotactile vocabularies. In this proposal, we discuss the thesis of the haptic proactive communication and our method to assess and implement it. Our goal is to understand the phenomena related to the proactive articulation of haptic signals and its use for communication and for the design of optimized tactile vocabularies.

Vibrotactile feedback is broadly used to support different tasks in virtual and augmented reality applications, such as navigation, communication, attentional redirection, or to enhance the sense of presence in virtual environments. Thus, we aim to include the haptic component to the most popular wearable used in VR applications: the VR headset. After studying the acuity around the head for vibrating stimuli, and trying different parameters, actuators, and configurations, we developed a haptic guidance technique to be used in a vibrotactile Head-mounted Display (HMD). Our vi-brotactile HMD was made to render the position of objects in a 3D space around the subject by varying both stimulus loci and vibration frequency. In this demonstration, the participants will interact with different scenarios where the mission is to select a number of predefined objects. However, instead of displaying occlusive graphical information to point to these objects, vibrotactile cues will provide guidance in the VR setup. Participants will see that our haptic guidance technique can be both easy to use and entertaining. (See Video: https://youtu.be/_H0MQy6QD7M).

Due to the perceptual characteristics of the head, vibrotactile Head-mounted Displays are built with low actuator density. Therefore, vibrotactile guidance is mostly assessed by pointing towards objects in the azimuthal plane. When it comes to multisensory interaction in 3D environments, it is also important to convey information about objects in the elevation plane. In this paper, we design and assess a haptic guidance technique for 3D environments. First, we explore the modulation of vibration frequency to indicate the position of objects in the elevation plane. Then, we assessed a vibrotactile HMD made to render the position of objects in a 3D space around the subject by varying both stimulus loci and vibration frequency. Results have shown that frequencies modulated with a quadratic growth function allowed a more accurate, precise, and faster target localization in an active head pointing task. The technique presented high usability and a strong learning effect for a haptic search across different scenarios in an immersive VR setup.

Communication is crucial in collaborative tasks. Multimodal strategies are commonly applied to complement, reinforce and disam-biguate information exchange. However, although multimodal communication is commonplace in Collaborative Virtual Environments, the proactive use of touch for intercommunication is surprisingly neglected regardless its importance for communication. In this paper, we look up to elements present in speech articulation to introduce the proactive haptic articulation as a novel approach for communication in CVEs. We defend the hypothesis that elements present in natural language, when added to the design of the vibro-tactile vocabulary, should provide an expressive medium for intercommunication. Moreover, we hypothesize that the ability to render tactile cues to a teammate will encourage users to adapt a given vocabulary spontaneously during its use. We implemented a case study around a collaborative puzzle task to demonstrate the use of such vocabulary. Results show that the proactive haptic articulation provided a way for participants to autonomously and dynamically adapt the provided tactile vocabulary to attend their communication needs during the task.

Communication is a fundamental process in collaborative work. In natural conditions, communication between team members is multimodal. This allows for redundancy, adaptation to different contexts, and different levels of focus. In collaborative virtual environments, however, hardware limitations and lack of appropriate interaction metaphors reduce the amount of collaboration. In this poster, we propose the design and use of a vibrotactile language to improve user intercommunication in CVE and, consequently, to increase the amount of effective collaboration.