infovis

Mechanical exerciser interface from 1938

February 20, 2012
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File the above under funny, if inaccurate, information visualization.  The Bread-o-Meter shows how many slices of bread would be needed to fuel your mad bicycle ride! Click here for the original post and other neat antique exercise articles.  

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A collection of beautiful and creative information visualizations

February 14, 2012
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Click here for a gallery of wonderful visualizations. My favorite is the Histomap (pictured above) from 1931. Someone update it, please!   Photo credit feeb @ Flickr

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Neat SciAm Blog Post on InfoVis

January 18, 2012

This story was passed to me today by Matt Shipman, who writes about research on The Abstract. An excerpt: [Right - Comparison of two road signs, Highway Gothic on the left, Clearview on the right, 2007. Credit: Wikimedia Commons - click on link to see large] The previous road sign font, Highway Gothic, was hard to read because of very small [...]

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Intuitive Interfaces for Software Developers

January 9, 2012
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Here is a link to some neat new research being done by my colleagues at NCSU.  It’s about the development of a tool that instantly changes the look of software code as it’s being developed, allowing for different ways to investigate bugs and features, but without changing the code in any way that might introduce errors. Dr. Emerson Murphy-Hill developed the interface [...]

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Miller Column Inception (or the geekiest movie you’ll see today)

May 11, 2011

Miller Columns are the browsing/visualization technique used in the Mac OSX Finder. It was inherited from the NeXT operating system (one of my favorites). I personally prefer this to the tree view that’s common in Windows Explorer. The embedded video below summarizes the essential action of the movie Inception (spoiler alert!): INCEPTION_FOLDER from chris baker on Vimeo. (via Kottke)

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Designer of movie UIs to design real UIs

February 11, 2011
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We’ve discussed Mark Coleran before with his fantastical work with those fake user interfaces you see in movies (see movie below).   According to this Fast Company blog post he will have a hand in designing real interfaces. But Coleran doesn’t just throw out the rule books on user experience and “human interface guidelines.” In fact, because many of his clients know [...]

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“Having the Data is not enough” – Visualization Techniques

December 7, 2010

I do love good visualization. I think animations like this, accompanied by a good story, would serve us well from conference presentations to convincing industry clients. It is from the “Joy of Stats,” on the BBC (which I’m apparently not allowed to watch due to my location.)

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3D is better than 2D, right?

January 22, 2010
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It seems that every few years, 3D technology is in the zeitgeist (with 3d movies).  User interfaces are not immune to the frenzy of 3D.  However, there is quite a bit of past research in 3D interfaces (I won’t even scratch the surface but see this simple Google Scholar search to start). Much, but not all, relate to navigation in [...]

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Data visualization tools

December 10, 2009
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Foreshadowing Anne’s upcoming series of posts on large, public, and free data sets, here are two interesting tools to help you visualize massive quantities of data. First, my grad student Margaux informed me of Google Fusion Tables (shown above). The site lets you upload data and visualize it in different ways. The website has some samples. From the website: Look [...]

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Usability/Design/HF Potpourri

December 4, 2009
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Just in time for the end of the year:  Top 10 interaction design books from Kicker Studio Making cooking safe for the blind (via Real World Design) Deciding when you need graphics (via uxforward) We’ve posted before about the man who designs the UIs in movies, but Gizmodo has posted his new streaming demo reel…fascinating. How will reading change with [...]

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Graph extravaganza: Who are our “users”?

November 13, 2009
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It’s Friday, so here are some interesting visitor statistics of the blog (based on the last 1580 visitors).  I meant to do this on our two year anniversary (two months ago) but better late than never. First, where are our visitors coming from?  Primarily in the U.S. and Europe with some visits from China. Zooming in on the U.S. and [...]

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Usability issues in navigating your life

September 8, 2009

Gordon Bell, a Microsoft Researcher, is recording his life in excruciating detail in a project dubbed MyLifeBits: Web sites he’s visited (221,173), photos taken (56,282), emails sent and received (156,041), docs written and read (18,883), phone conversations had (2,000), photos snapped by the SenseCam hanging around his neck (66,000), songs listened to (7,139), and videos taken by him (2,164). Why [...]

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Augmented Reality for Everyone

July 16, 2009

There have been many recent examples of consumer friendly augmented reality applications for smart phone users.  I remember reading about augmented reality research over a decade ago (in an HCI class) and remembering how bulky, expensive, experimental, and out-of-reach it seemed back then.  The systems back then required head-mounted displays and were physically attached to cameras and large computers.  Now [...]

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Population Trends: Age

July 16, 2009

Perhaps you are like me, and always looking for great images to put in your presentations about why it’s important to consider aging in human factors work. Or perhaps you just like a good, creative visualization. Well, here you go on both counts. This comes courtesy of Mark Thoma of the Economist’s View blog, created from census data. It shows [...]

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Emergency Checklists and Aviation

June 10, 2009

The recent water landing into the Hudson is still being investigated. This AP article focuses on whether flight attendants were trained not to open the back door of the plane during a water landing, but the most interesting bit comes at the end: Another concern is whether the FAA and airlines need to revise emergency procedures for pilots in the [...]

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Infographics Galore!

June 1, 2009

Set aside some time to browse this treasure trove of infographics. I love infographics but someone should do a study–do they improve comprehension? [from kottke]

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