The content of thought can be regarded as internalized and intermixed perceptions of the world an... more The content of thought can be regarded as internalized and intermixed perceptions of the world and the actions of thought as internalized and intermixed actions on the world. Reexternalizing the content of thought onto something perceptible and reexternalizing the actions of thinking as actions of the body can facilitate thinking. New technologies can do both. They can allow creation and revision of external representations and they can allow interaction with the hands and the body. This analysis will be supported by several empirical studies. One will show that students learn more from creating visual explanations of STEM phenomena than from creating verbal ones. Another will show that conceptually congruent actions on an iPad promote arithmetic performance. A third will show that when reading spatial descriptions, students use their hands to create mental models.
Assembly or repair tasks often require objects to be held in specific orientations to view or fit... more Assembly or repair tasks often require objects to be held in specific orientations to view or fit together. Research has addressed the use of AR to assist in these tasks, delivered as registered overlaid graphics on stereoscopic head-worn displays. In contrast, we are interested in using monoscopic head-worn displays, such as Google Glass. To accommodate their small monoscopic field of view, off center from the user's line of sight, we are exploring alternatives to registered overlays. We describe four interactive rotation guidance visualizations for tracked objects intended for these displays.
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Nov 1, 2021
Work on VR and AR task interaction and visualization paradigms has typically focused on providing... more Work on VR and AR task interaction and visualization paradigms has typically focused on providing information about the current step (a cue) immediately before or during its performance. Some research has also shown benefits to simultaneously providing information about the next step (a precue). We explore whether it would be possible to improve efficiency by precueing information about multiple upcoming steps before completing the current step. To accomplish this, we developed a remote VR user study comparing task completion time and subjective metrics for different levels and styles of precueing in a path-following task. Our visualizations vary the precueing level (number of steps precued in advance) and style (whether the path to a target is communicated through a line to the target, and whether the place of a target is communicated through graphics at the target). Participants in our study performed best when given two to three precues for visualizations using lines to show the path to targets. However, performance degraded when four precues were used. On the other hand, participants performed best with only one precue for visualizations without lines, showing only the places of targets, and performance degraded when a second precue was given. In addition, participants performed better using visualizations with lines than ones without lines.
We demonstrate an interaction technique that allows a user to point at a world-in-miniature repre... more We demonstrate an interaction technique that allows a user to point at a world-in-miniature representation of a city-scale virtual environment and perform efficient and precise teleportation by pre-orienting an avatar. A preview of the post-teleport view of the full-scale virtual environment updates interactively as the user adjusts the position, yaw, and pitch of the avatar's head with a pair of 6DoF-tracked controllers. We describe design decisions and contrast with alternative approaches to virtual travel.
Visualizations are everywhere, on signs and billboards, in newspapers and texts, informative or i... more Visualizations are everywhere, on signs and billboards, in newspapers and texts, informative or instructive. Designing effective visualizations is a challenge. We have developed a collaboration of cognitive and computer science for uncovering and instantiating cognitive design principles to generate visualizations automatically. The program is iterative, using psychological research to uncover mental representations of the content to be communicated as well as interpretable visual devices for conveying that content and computer graphic techniques and knowledge to produce visualizations. We illustrate the program by describing projects developing effective route maps and assembly instructions.
The content of thought can be regarded as internalized and intermixed perceptions of the world an... more The content of thought can be regarded as internalized and intermixed perceptions of the world and the actions of thought as internalized and intermixed actions on the world. Reexternalizing the content of thought onto something perceptible and reexternalizing the actions of thinking as actions of the body can facilitate thinking. New technologies can do both. They can allow creation and revision of external representations and they can allow interaction with the hands and the body. This analysis will be supported by several empirical studies. One will show that students learn more from creating visual explanations of STEM phenomena than from creating verbal ones. Another will show that conceptually congruent actions on an iPad promote arithmetic performance. A third will show that when reading spatial descriptions, students use their hands to create mental models.
Assembly or repair tasks often require objects to be held in specific orientations to view or fit... more Assembly or repair tasks often require objects to be held in specific orientations to view or fit together. Research has addressed the use of AR to assist in these tasks, delivered as registered overlaid graphics on stereoscopic head-worn displays. In contrast, we are interested in using monoscopic head-worn displays, such as Google Glass. To accommodate their small monoscopic field of view, off center from the user's line of sight, we are exploring alternatives to registered overlays. We describe four interactive rotation guidance visualizations for tracked objects intended for these displays.
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, Nov 1, 2021
Work on VR and AR task interaction and visualization paradigms has typically focused on providing... more Work on VR and AR task interaction and visualization paradigms has typically focused on providing information about the current step (a cue) immediately before or during its performance. Some research has also shown benefits to simultaneously providing information about the next step (a precue). We explore whether it would be possible to improve efficiency by precueing information about multiple upcoming steps before completing the current step. To accomplish this, we developed a remote VR user study comparing task completion time and subjective metrics for different levels and styles of precueing in a path-following task. Our visualizations vary the precueing level (number of steps precued in advance) and style (whether the path to a target is communicated through a line to the target, and whether the place of a target is communicated through graphics at the target). Participants in our study performed best when given two to three precues for visualizations using lines to show the path to targets. However, performance degraded when four precues were used. On the other hand, participants performed best with only one precue for visualizations without lines, showing only the places of targets, and performance degraded when a second precue was given. In addition, participants performed better using visualizations with lines than ones without lines.
We demonstrate an interaction technique that allows a user to point at a world-in-miniature repre... more We demonstrate an interaction technique that allows a user to point at a world-in-miniature representation of a city-scale virtual environment and perform efficient and precise teleportation by pre-orienting an avatar. A preview of the post-teleport view of the full-scale virtual environment updates interactively as the user adjusts the position, yaw, and pitch of the avatar's head with a pair of 6DoF-tracked controllers. We describe design decisions and contrast with alternative approaches to virtual travel.
Visualizations are everywhere, on signs and billboards, in newspapers and texts, informative or i... more Visualizations are everywhere, on signs and billboards, in newspapers and texts, informative or instructive. Designing effective visualizations is a challenge. We have developed a collaboration of cognitive and computer science for uncovering and instantiating cognitive design principles to generate visualizations automatically. The program is iterative, using psychological research to uncover mental representations of the content to be communicated as well as interpretable visual devices for conveying that content and computer graphic techniques and knowledge to produce visualizations. We illustrate the program by describing projects developing effective route maps and assembly instructions.
How do people understand the everyday, yet intricate, behaviors that unfold around them? In the p... more How do people understand the everyday, yet intricate, behaviors that unfold around them? In the present
research, we explored this by presenting viewers with self-paced slideshows of everyday activities and
recording looking times, subjective segmentation (breakpoints) into action units, and slide-to-slide
physical change. A detailed comparison of the joint time courses of these variables showed that looking
time and physical change were locally maximal at breakpoints and greater for higher level action units
than for lower level units. Even when slideshows were scrambled, breakpoints were regarded longer and
were more physically different from ordinary moments, showing that breakpoints are distinct even out
of context. Breakpoints are bridges: from one action to another, from one level to another, and from
perception to conception.
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Papers by Barbara Tversky
research, we explored this by presenting viewers with self-paced slideshows of everyday activities and
recording looking times, subjective segmentation (breakpoints) into action units, and slide-to-slide
physical change. A detailed comparison of the joint time courses of these variables showed that looking
time and physical change were locally maximal at breakpoints and greater for higher level action units
than for lower level units. Even when slideshows were scrambled, breakpoints were regarded longer and
were more physically different from ordinary moments, showing that breakpoints are distinct even out
of context. Breakpoints are bridges: from one action to another, from one level to another, and from
perception to conception.