This paper describes a long-term project exploring advanced visual interfaces for antenna design. MERL developed three successive prototypes that embodied an evolution towards larger scales and more concrete semantics for visualization of large sets of candidate designs and then winnowing them down. We experimented with multidimensional scaling and then collective line graphs before settling on linked scatterplots to visualize performance in a design space of up to 10 million antennas at a time. In the end, the scatterplot solution was most successful at balancing intelligibility with visualization of the space as a whole. The design allows for adding more 1D or 2D linked feature visualizations if needed, and it smoothly transitions to other "details on demand" views for final tweaking.

The need for effective search for television content is growing as the number of choices for TV viewing and/or recording explodes. In this paper we describe a preliminary prototype of a multimodal Speech-In List-Out (SILO) interface in which users' input is unrestricted by vocabulary or grammar. We report on usability testing with a sample of six users. The prototype enables search through video content metadata downloaded from an electronic program guide (EPG) service. Our setup for testing included adding a microphone to a TV remote control and running an application on a PC whose visual interface was displayed on a TV.

In this paper we propose a new model for a class of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) interfaces [16] in the context of consumer video devices. The basic spatial layout explodes a sequence of image frames into a 3D trail in order to provide more context for a spatial/temporal presentation. As the user plays forward or back, the trail advances or recedes while the image in the foreground focus position is replaced. The design is able to incorporate a variety of methods for analyzing or highlighting images in the trail. Our hypotheses are that users can navigate more quickly and precisely to points of interest when compared to conventional consumer-based browsing, channel flipping, or fast-forwarding techniques. We report on an experiment testing our hypotheses in which we found that subjects were more accurate but not faster in browsing to a target of interest in recorded television content with a TV remote.

In this paper we introduce multidimensional visualization and interaction techniques that are an extension to related work in parallel histograms and dynamic querying. Bargrams are, in effect, histograms whose bars have been tipped over and lined up end-to-end. We discuss affordances of parallel bargrams in the context of systems that support consumer-based information exploration and choice based on the attributes of the items in the choice set. Our tool called EZChooser has enabled a number of prototypes in such domains as Internet shopping, investment decisions, college choice, and so on, and a limited version has been deployed for car shopping. Evaluations of the techniques include an experiment indicating that trained users prefer EZChooser over static tables for choice tasks among sets of 50 items with 7-9 attributes.

In this paper we propose new visual interface technology to address multidimensional data exploration and browsing tasks. MultiNav, a prototype from GTE Laboratories, is based upon a multidimensional information model that affords new data exploration and semantically structured browsing interactions. The primary visual metaphor is based on sliding rods, each of which is associated with an information dimension from the underlying model. Users can interactively select value ranges along the rods in order to reveal hidden relationships as well as query and restrict the set through direct manipulation. A novel focus+context view is afforded in which detail about individual items is revealed within the context of the global multidimensional attribute space. We propose a novel interaction technique to change focus, which is based on dragging rods from side to side. We relate this work on multidimensional information visualization to other research in the area, including Parallel Coordinates, Dynamic Histograms, Dynamic Queries, and focus+context tables.*.

In this paper we consider the role of rapid-fire presentation of images in the service of navigation in information spaces. We presume a model of information navigation in which the user performs a cycle of (pre)viewing, selecting, and moving. Our hypothesis is that images presented to the user in rapid succession can significantly enhance the previewing step, thus optimizing the selection step and improving navigability. We discuss two prototypes for navigation tools in Web information spaces in which images are used as the primary means for presenting meta-information about "upcoming " Web pages. The presentation is modeled as a flow of information streaming to the user, and orientation is visualized through positions in ordered sequences. KEYWORDS: Information navigation, visualization, images, previewing INTRODUCTION George Furnas [4] has developed a theory of navigation in information spaces that serves as a useful springboard for positioning research on this sub...