Analysts are often interested in understanding the association between variables within a dataset. This paper describes a set of techniques for augmenting the Heatmap Matrix, which represents pairwise intersections of categorical variables. The proposed extensions include adapting the design and layout of the matrix to enhance its readability, expanding the number of metrics that can be presented, displaying matching records in a coordinated table view, and embedding the Chi-square test of independence. These features are demonstrated on two datasets using the empirical prototype that has been developed.

Abstract As global COVID-19 pandemic response has moved from full lockdowns and partial lockdowns in most parts of the world to a post-COVID era, an interesting new phenomenon that has emerged is the increased prevalence of hybrid meetings with a mixture of online and in-person attendees. The opportunity for remote participants to observe the responses and interactions of others in the meeting is generally accepted as being limited. An experimental prototype system, called Wedge Video, has been constructed as an attempt to improve the experience of remote participants in hybrid in-person/remote meetings. Wedge Video uses standard screen and camera equipment with existing video conferencing software (Zoom). An evaluation of the prototype system was conducted based on three simple games that each required players to interact rapidly and with some use of body language or gaze direction. Encouraging results led to the examination of the geometry of screen and camera placement in detail. A system that has a somewhat ‘virtual reality’ feeling to it has now been developed. The remote user is given a view of the in-person part of the meeting with participants at the same scale and location as they would be if the remote user were at the table themselves. Similarly, the local participants see the remote person in place at their table, at a realistic scale and with close to accurate gaze direction. A very preliminary evaluation of these concepts has been promising.

Whilst the primary purpose of conferences is work --- formal exchange and sharing of information --- they almost always also include elements of play: informal social and entertainment elements, such as receptions, dinners, and tourism activities. These activities also provide the opportunity for 'serious' discussions, meeting people, and networking, and are an essential part of a good conference. Despite this, most virtual conferencing tools fail to provide support for such activities, instead focusing on austere goals related to saving money, time, and travel. This paper describes the concept of a Virtual Cocktail Party (VCP) tool to integrate into a virtual conference environment. In VCP the 'party' is presented as a mixture of individuals and small conversation groups 'circulating' at the virtual venue. Exploiting an automated speech-to-text system, words from conversations are shown in word-clouds displayed around conversation groups, sufficient to identify topics of conversation allowing participants to decide whether or not to join a group.

The growing use of smart electricity meters means that real-time information relating to residential electricity consumption is readily available. The globally recognized need to manage and improve the efficiency of our use of electricity, and the need in most jurisdictions to increase the integration and utilization of non-dispatchable renewable energy sources, provides a strong motivation for individuals to be aware of their electricity consumption in real-time, and to manage that consumption according to need (imperative, background or discretionary activities) and availability of energy. This paper describes the development and preliminary evaluation of a dashboard-like display, implemented on a mobile platform (phone or tablet), which provides both an instant overview and awareness of consumption and availability, and facility to drill down to determine detail, and potentially to control individual appliances.

Electric vehicle charging strategies rely on knowledge of future vehicle usage, or implicitly make assumptions about a vehicle's usage. For example, a naïve charging strategy may assume that a full charge is required as soon as possible and simply charge at the maximum rate when plugged in, whereas a smart strategy might make use of the knowledge that the vehicle is not needed for a number of hours and optimise its charging behaviour to minimise its impact on the electricity grid. These charging strategies may also offer vehicle-to-grid services.

The need and desire to promote energy awareness within households is steadily growing, and with this many different approaches for visualising energy use beyond the usual monthly bill, many in near real time, have emerged. These approaches are a positive step towards households becoming more environmentally conscious and in control of their energy usage, which is vitally important if greater energy use efficiency is to be achieved. This paper reviews the current state of research in domestic energy use visualisation from four perspectives: personal characteristics influencing and motivating behaviour of individuals; correctly informing the individual; the reality and effectiveness of feedback; and the utility and impact of social effects. An analysis of these four perspectives will further our understanding of how to create successful domestic energy use visualisations.

The paper describes a pilot system for the detailed management of domestic electricity consumption aimed at minimizing demand peaks and consumer cost. Management decisions are made both interactively by consumers themselves, and where practical, automatically by computer. These decisions are based on realtime pricing and availability information, as well as current and historic usage data. The benefits of the energy strategies implied by such a system are elaborated, showing the potential for significant peak demand reduction and slowing of the need for growth in generation capacity. An overview is provided of the component technologies and interaction methods we have designed, but the paper focuses on the communication of real-time information to the consumer through a combination of specific and ambient visualizations. There is a need for both overview information (eg how much power is being used right now; how much energy have we used so far today; what does it cost?) and information at the point-of-use (is it OK to turn this dryer on now, or should I wait until later?). To assist the design of these visualizations, a survey is underway aimed at establishing people's understanding of power and energy concepts.

There are various software technologies that allow capture and redelivery of lectures. Most of these technologies however rely on the use of proprietary software, often requiring extra efforts from the lecturer in terms of the initial preparation of the lecture material, or in editing and annotating after the lecture to make the material suitable for the students. To review the material students then require access to the proprietary software. This paper describes a system for the lightweight capture of lecture presentations, based on the use of a low-cost large interactive display surface, together with standard Microsoft PowerPoint/spl trade/ presentation software. The captured version of the presentation includes the original lecture slides' graphical annotations made by the lecturer during the lecture, and the audio recording of the lecture; all saved as a PowerPoint file. In addition, the system adds some annotations and index slides to allow quick and easy access to different segments of the presentation. Presentations can be replayed in part or in full as required, preserving all of the content of the live lecture.

Copy and paste, or cut and paste, using a clipboard or paste buffer is the principal facility provided to users for transferring data between and within application software. This mechanism is clumsy to use where several pieces of information must be moved systematically, for example, when filling a form or building a table. We present an alternative, more natural user interface facility to make the task less onerous, and to provide improved visual feedback. Our mechanism — the stretchable selection tool (SST) — is a semi-transparent overlay augmenting the mouse pointer to automate paste operations and provide information to prompt the user. Two prototype implementations are described, one of which functions in a collaborative software environment allowing users to cooperate on multiple copy/paste operations. We also present the results of an informal user evaluation contrasting the SST with traditional cut and paste, and with another multiple copy/paste system.

We demonstrate a graphic visualisation of a travel itinerary, with special emphasis on time and time zones. A traditional itinerary is a text document, detailing locations, and arrival and departure times for travel and accommodation. It is usually written in diary form, showing the sequence of events to be followed on a trip. Many questions can be answered easily from such an itinerary. What time should the traveler check in at the airport? Which country are they visiting on a particular date? Other questions can be more difficult to answer. How long is the first flight? What time is it at home when the traveler reaches their hotel? The written form is also quite poor at providing a 'picture' of an entire trip. The reader cannot tell at a glance how many countries are being visited, or whether the stay in England is longer than the slay in France. The visualisation discussed here attempts to make answering such questions relatively simple. Usability studies are described which show the advantages of our visualisation.

Presentation techniques for topological networks can be broadly classified as distortion‐oriented and nondistortion‐oriented. Although there has been a growing interest in applying various distortion‐oriented techniques, the application of an earlier example, the bifocal display, has so far been underexploited. This article describes a number of human‐computer interface techniques potentially relevant to the presentation and navigation of topological networks associated with transport systems, and describes a preliminary experimental study of a number of techniques for presenting the London Underground map as part of a real‐time information system for travelers.

A study has been carried out to identify the effects of different human-to-human communication modes on dyadic computer supported group work. A pilot study evaluated an available shared work-space software system, supplemented by face-to-face, telephone-based, and text-based communication modes between the two users. The findings from this study were then used to design an extensive experiment to explore the relative impact of face-to-face, full motion video, slow motion video, and audio only communication modes when used in conjunction with this type of CSCW system. This paper describes the experiments, and examines the findings of this empirical study with the aim of establishing the importance of co-presence 1 in CSCW, and the effectiveness of these various communication modes in achieving it. KEYWORDS computer supported cooperative work (CSCW), group communication, group work, communication mode, video conferencing. INTRODUCTION A growing number of tasks in our work environ...

One of the common problems associated with large computer-based information systems is the relatively small window through which an information space can be viewed. Increasing interest in recent years has been focused on the development of distortion-oriented presentation techniques to address this problem. However, the growing number of new terminologies and techniques developed have caused considerable confusion to the graphical user interface designer, consequently making the comparison of these presentation techniques and generalization of empirical results of experiments with them very difficult, if not impossible. This article provides a taxonomy of distortion-oriented techniques which demonstrates clearly their underlying relationships. A unified theory is presented to reveal their roots and origins. Issues relating to the implementation and performance of these techniques are also discussed.

Direct manipulation interfaces cover a range of interactions involving a variety of styles. An important first step in developing techniques for describing and implementing asynchronous interactive dialogues of the type found in direct manipulation environments is an understanding of the underlying interaction tasks viewed from a user perspective. This paper reviews previous attempts to classify interaction tasks, examines them in the context of the Macintosh environment and proposes a taxonomy of tasks. Particular attention is devoted to tasks involving repeated actions. It is shown that all tasks reduce to selection sub-tasks, which has implications for the types of tools and techniques needed to describe and implement direct manipulation interfaces. In particular it is suggested that the meneme model of Lean Cuisine (Apperley and Spence, 1989) which was developed in the context of menu systems, and is based on selectable representations of objects, could be extended to handle the other interactions of a direct manipulation interface.

Abstract Lean Cuisine, an interface design notation derived from a study of the behaviour of menu systems is examined as the basis for a prototyping environment for direct manipulation interfaces. By using the Seeheim model for user interface management systems to categorize the model information that can be extracted from a Lean Cuisine specification, it is shown that a description of both the action and control layers can be derived. The direct implementation of these layers from a Lean Cuisine specification is described.

The specification, design, implementation and control of highly interactive direct manipulation dialogues is of increasing interest. However, existing techniques fall well short of the goal of isolating the design of the dialogue from the detail of its implementation. This paper closely analyses the structural characteristics of menu systems, a major component of such dialogues, and arising from this analysis proposes a new diagrammatic approach to their description. This approach is shown to be able to completely specify the details and behaviour of a system of menus from an external point of view. The parallels between this notation and the recently defined class of automata, Event-Response Systems, are discussed, demonstrating the potential for a direct implementation of an interface from this description. Further, it is suggested that the notation could be extended to cover all aspects of direct manipulation interaction.

A technique for presenting data on a graphics display, while avoiding the inherent windowing problem of conventional v.d.u's is proposed. This technique is centered on the concept of spatial information management. Design principles are presented, together with an example design modifying the display of a conventional microprocessor. The viability of the technique is demonstrated, and a more sophisticated implementation proposed.