Innovations in Visualization

Positions have been filled for this summer.

Available Summer Projects in Innovis

The Innovis research group is looking for qualified students for this summer for three research topics in Information Visualization: Personal Visualization, Athletes Data Sensemaking, and Games and Visualization. These projects are research projects. Candidates should have strong interests in both research and Information Visualization. If you are interested in any of the projects below, please contact Prof. Sheelagh Carpendale (sheelagh @ ucalgary.ca) and Post-Doctoral researcher Charles Perin (charles.perin @ ucalgary.ca).

Project 1: Personal Visualization

This first project will consist of reviewing the literature in Personal Visualization, gathering personal visualization existing in the wild, and structuring this collection. The first step will be to build a website to showcase current practices in terms of personal visualization and offer the opportunity to people to contribute to this collection. It will also imply updating some existing projects that are out of date and make them available online. The main requirement for this project is good knowledge and skills in web technologies (HTML, Javascript) and ideally knowledge in client/server architecture (database management, logon, etc). This project will be conducted under the supervision of and in collaboration with:

Project 2: Athletes Data Sensemaking

More and more individuals make use of personal data collection devices (e.g., fitbit, Garmin) to track their daily activities, raising new challenges about data collection and visualization for sensemaking. This project will involve a collaboration with MIO (https://www.mioglobal.com), one of the leading companies for high-quality athlete’s devices. Their devices track steps, calories, distance, heart rate, speed and pace, and can be connected to a GPS watch. We will first tackle the technological challenges, i.e. data gathering and storing. Then, we will conduct interviews with professional athletes to establish their needs and the requirements a visualization tool should support to help them make sense of their collected data. We will iteratively design prototypes of such visualization tools that the athletes would use and provide feedback on. Candidates should have a strong interest in research, longitudinal studies with experts, and sports. They should preferably have strong knowledge in web technologies (HTML, Javascript, client/server). This project will be conducted under the supervision of and in collaboration with:

Project 3: Games and Visualization

This research project has two sides, and the candidates could choose either one of them, either both. The first aspect consists of exploring the design space of “gamified” visualizations, exploring in particular what makes a visualization engaging; how people can enjoy learning through digital games; and potentially the use of token-based digital and/or physical visualizations in order to provide games to a broad range of people with various expertise. Part of the project will involve investigating the benefits of such games on the intellectual skills training of people. The second aspect relates to visualizing the benefits of intellectual skills games for people. Intellectual skills games are a way of training our brains, and visualization is a way for people to track their results and progression. Classic approaches include achievement systems and target goals. We will investigate how visualization can be an incentive for people to practice and improve their capabilities, as well as explore what makes a visualization playful, engaging, and rewarding. This project will be conducted under the supervision of and in collaboration with:

Project 4: Visualization Construction

More and more non-infovis expert people want to design visualizations. However existing visualization design tools are complex and present some limitations as identified by Brett Victor (https://vimeo.com/66085662): dynamicity, simplicity, and expressivity. We want to explore a new territory for visualization design based on the idea of construction (https://hal.inria.fr/hal-00978437v2/document), composition and assembly. The project could involve digital and/or physical visualization. This project could be approached in different ways. One approach would be to participate in the design and running of a study to learn more about the benefits of the construction process in visualization. The second approach would be to investigate the benefits and limitation of existing tangible construction tools such as (i.e. bricks), games (i.e. lego), and consider how they might be adapted for visualization.