In this paper, we discuss a new user interface, a complementary environment for the work with personal document archives, i.e. for document filing and retrieval. We introduce our implementation of a spatial medium for document interaction, explorative search and active navigation, which exploits and further stimulates the human strengths of visual information processing. Our system achieves a high degree of immersion of the user, so that he/she forgets the artificiality of his/her environment. This is done by means of a tripartite ensemble of allowing users to interact naturally with gestures and postures (as an option gestures and postures can be individually taught to the system by users), exploiting 3D technology, and supporting the user to maintain structures he/she discovers, as well as provide computer calculated semantic structures. Our ongoing evaluation shows that even non-expert users can efficiently work with the information in a document collection, and have fun.
One important intention of human-centered information visualization is to represent huge amounts of abstract data in a visual representation that allows even users from foreign application domains to interact with the visualization, to understand the underlying data, and finally, to gain new, application-related knowledge. The visualization will help experts as well as non-experts to link previously or isolated knowledge-items in their mental map with new insights.Our approach explicitly supports the process of linking knowledge-items with three concepts. At first, the representation of data items in an ontology categorizes and relates them. Secondly, the use of various visualization techniques visually correlates isolated items by graph-structures, layout, attachment, integration, or hyperlink techniques. Thirdly, the intensive use of visual metaphors relates a known source domain to a less known target domain. In order to realize a scenario of these concepts, we developed a visual interface for non-experts to maintain complex wastewater treatment plants. This domain-specific application is used to give our concepts a meaningful background.
Kinesthetic memory is an essential factor in human interaction with the outside world. It helps adept keyboard users to type rapidly and hit the keys without having to look at them. It enables musicians to play their instruments without consciously having to think about the necessary movements. And it can help people to find things again, based on the location where they put them. The benefits of kinesthetic memory in the physical world are well known and well used for training or in physical therapy. Yet little effort has been made to examine the effects of kinesthetic memory in a virtual environment. In our paper, we present a user study designed to explore the intensity of kinesthetic memory while interacting with a large screen immersive environment. This could be used to improve the usability and effectiveness of user interfaces for such environments.
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