I have worked early in my career as a programmer at Bell Telephone Laborators on the MULTICS project in the late 1960s. I also worked on the Sprint Missile project on Meck Island (Kwajelin Atoll). After staying home with two children I went back and obtained my PhD in Computer Science. I did work in Empirical Studies of Programmers, then Human- computer interaction and Human-robot interaction. I worked at the National Institute of Standards (NIST) and as a program manager at DARPA. I retired in 2018 from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL).
2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2017
The power grid is a complex, interconnected system that requires the coordination of multiple ent... more The power grid is a complex, interconnected system that requires the coordination of multiple entities to ensure the reliability of the system. System operators must be aware of the impacts of various natural and man-made contingencies through telemetry from their control systems, and they must also be aware of the integrity and availability of the cyber assets on their systems. A team of researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory have conducted a series of observations and interviews at power utilities to identify what information needs to be available for both control room dispatchers and cyber security analysts to maintain situation awareness of cyber security to effectively monitor the cyber assets on utility control systems. The researchers interviewed and observed control room dispatchers and spoke with regional control system engineers and cyber security analysts to define the context in which such information would be used. The results of this work will inform the design of a tool that will enhance cyber situation awareness and help facilitate effective communication between the various personnel and organizations with utility and other regional authorities during contingencies.
Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016
This course will introduce the field of Visual Analytics to HCI researchers and practitioners hig... more This course will introduce the field of Visual Analytics to HCI researchers and practitioners highlighting the contributions they can make to this field. Topics will include a definition of visual analytics along with examples of current systems, types of tasks and end users, issues in defining user requirements, design of visualizations and interactions, guidelines and heuristics, the current state of user-centered evaluations, and metrics for evaluation. We encourage designers, HCI researchers, and HCI practitioners to attend to learn how their skills can contribute to advancing the state of the art of visual analytics.
Multiple sets of heuristic have been developed and studied in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI... more Multiple sets of heuristic have been developed and studied in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) domain as a method for fast, lightweight evaluations for usability problems. However, none of the heuristics have been adopted by the information visualization or the visual analytics communities. Our literature review looked at heuristic sets developed by Nielsen and Molich [7] and Forsell and Johansson [1] to understand how these heuristics were developed and their intended applications. We also reviewed heuristic studies conducted by Hearst and colleagues [2] and Vaataja and colleagues [10] to determine how individuals apply heuristics to evaluating visualization systems. While each study noted potential issues with the heuristic descriptions and the evaluator’s familiarity with the heuristics, no direct connections were made. Our research looks to understand how individuals with domain expertise in information visualization and visual analytics could use heuristics to discover usability problems and evaluate visualizations. By empirically evaluating visualization heuristics, we can identify the key ways that these heuristics can be used to inform the visual analytics design process. Further, they may help to identify usability problems that are and are not task specific. We hope to use this process to also identify missing heuristics that may apply to designs for different analytic purposes.
The VAST Challenge has been a popular venue for academic and industry participants for over ten y... more The VAST Challenge has been a popular venue for academic and industry participants for over ten years. Many participants comment that the majority of their time in preparing VAST Challenge entries is discovering elements in their software environments that need to be redesigned in order to solve the given task. Fortunately, there is no need to wait until the VAST Challenge is announced to test out software systems. The Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository contains all past VAST Challenge tasks, data, solutions and submissions. In this poster we describe how developers can perform informal evaluations of various aspects of their visual analytics environments using VAST Challenge information.
2017 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC), 2017
The power grid is a complex, interconnected system that requires the coordination of multiple ent... more The power grid is a complex, interconnected system that requires the coordination of multiple entities to ensure the reliability of the system. System operators must be aware of the impacts of various natural and man-made contingencies through telemetry from their control systems, and they must also be aware of the integrity and availability of the cyber assets on their systems. A team of researchers from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Idaho National Laboratory have conducted a series of observations and interviews at power utilities to identify what information needs to be available for both control room dispatchers and cyber security analysts to maintain situation awareness of cyber security to effectively monitor the cyber assets on utility control systems. The researchers interviewed and observed control room dispatchers and spoke with regional control system engineers and cyber security analysts to define the context in which such information would be used. The results of this work will inform the design of a tool that will enhance cyber situation awareness and help facilitate effective communication between the various personnel and organizations with utility and other regional authorities during contingencies.
Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2016
This course will introduce the field of Visual Analytics to HCI researchers and practitioners hig... more This course will introduce the field of Visual Analytics to HCI researchers and practitioners highlighting the contributions they can make to this field. Topics will include a definition of visual analytics along with examples of current systems, types of tasks and end users, issues in defining user requirements, design of visualizations and interactions, guidelines and heuristics, the current state of user-centered evaluations, and metrics for evaluation. We encourage designers, HCI researchers, and HCI practitioners to attend to learn how their skills can contribute to advancing the state of the art of visual analytics.
Multiple sets of heuristic have been developed and studied in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI... more Multiple sets of heuristic have been developed and studied in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) domain as a method for fast, lightweight evaluations for usability problems. However, none of the heuristics have been adopted by the information visualization or the visual analytics communities. Our literature review looked at heuristic sets developed by Nielsen and Molich [7] and Forsell and Johansson [1] to understand how these heuristics were developed and their intended applications. We also reviewed heuristic studies conducted by Hearst and colleagues [2] and Vaataja and colleagues [10] to determine how individuals apply heuristics to evaluating visualization systems. While each study noted potential issues with the heuristic descriptions and the evaluator’s familiarity with the heuristics, no direct connections were made. Our research looks to understand how individuals with domain expertise in information visualization and visual analytics could use heuristics to discover usability problems and evaluate visualizations. By empirically evaluating visualization heuristics, we can identify the key ways that these heuristics can be used to inform the visual analytics design process. Further, they may help to identify usability problems that are and are not task specific. We hope to use this process to also identify missing heuristics that may apply to designs for different analytic purposes.
The VAST Challenge has been a popular venue for academic and industry participants for over ten y... more The VAST Challenge has been a popular venue for academic and industry participants for over ten years. Many participants comment that the majority of their time in preparing VAST Challenge entries is discovering elements in their software environments that need to be redesigned in order to solve the given task. Fortunately, there is no need to wait until the VAST Challenge is announced to test out software systems. The Visual Analytics Benchmark Repository contains all past VAST Challenge tasks, data, solutions and submissions. In this poster we describe how developers can perform informal evaluations of various aspects of their visual analytics environments using VAST Challenge information.
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