Exploring Interactions with Physically Dynamic Bar Charts

Abstract

Visualizations such as bar charts help users reason about data, but are mostly screen-based, rarely physical, and almost never physical and dynamic. This paper investigates the role of physically dynamic bar charts and evaluates new interactions for exploring and working with datasets rendered in dynamic physical form. To facilitate our exploration we constructed a 10×10 interactive bar chart and designed interactions that supported fundamental visualisation tasks, specifically: annotation, navigation, filtering, comparison, organization, and sorting. The interactions were evaluated in a user study with 17 participants. We identify the preferred methods of working with the data for each task (e.g. directly tapping rows to hide bars), highlight the strengths and limitations of working with physical data, and discuss the challenges of integrating the proposed interactions together into a larger data exploration system. In general, physical interactions were intuitive, informative, and enjoyable, paving the way for new explorations in physical data visualizations.

Morphees+

“…For instance, Length is good to describe actuated pin displays [11,14,53,29,31,33]. In inFORM [11], each pin can extend 100 mm.…”

The Visual and Beyond

“…[28, p.3228] and established a framework for visualizations to help describe, compare and critique non-screen based data representations [28]. Data physicalization is now an active research area (e.g., [42,54,56] Another class of physical representation utilizes haptic or tactile feedback, instead of mapping data to physical form (e.g., [22,57]). In tactilization information is conveyed through tactile stimulation [9].…”

Exploring the Potential of Physical Visualizations

“…Similar projects used physical avatars in form of a puppet [Daian et al, 2007], a flower [Haller et al, 2011;Hong et al, 2015] or encoded data into the transparency of a lamp shape [Cha et al, 2016]. The first project that looked into the role of physically dynamic data representations for the exploration and analysis of datasets was EMERGE [Taher et al, 2015]: an interactive bar chart, equipped with plastic rods, RGB Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs), a Microsoft Kinect® and a projector supported fundamental data representation tasks such as filtering or sorting (see Figure 4.18-right). Observations in a study revealed that physical interactions were intuitive, informative, and enjoyable but also unfolded the limitations of working with physical data.…”

“…Center: "Breakaway" is an ambient sculpture that encodes data into its shape and movement based on sensors in a people's chair [Jafarinaimi et al, 2005]. Right: The EMERGE project explored interactions with physically dynamic bar charts [Taher et al, 2015] As the examples presented in this chapter illustrate, physicalizations have been created and used by various audiences for representing diverse datasets for several goals. Especially the rise of digital fabrication technologies simplified the creation of physicalizations and, therefore, increased the interest in studying their benefits, also regarding pragmatic purposes.…”

“…While this can be explained by our chosen physical variables, it opens up the questions in which ways interactions with a physicalization can and should be designed to be effective and understood. While Taher et al [2015] started to explore interaction techniques for dynamic Limitations and Future Work physical bar charts, the ways in which physical interactions, such as grasping and lifting, might affect the data exploration process are unclear. Furthermore, it should be investigated in which ways "affordances" [Gibson, 1986;Norman, 2002] that physicalizations might implicate can be designed and incorporated to imply that an action is possible, similarly to digital visualizations [Boy et al, 2016].…”