Human Computer Interaction Research Lab at SFSU
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Information Visualization

Allowing users to perceive and interact with information is an active area of UI research. In our work, we focus on specific application areas, and seek to tailor visualization needs to an audience.

Our projects in this area include interaction techniques for use on small screens, work on analyzing information in large data repositories, and work in interfaces for ubiquitous computing environments.

Histogram Visualizations of Data Sets
In joint work with the Microsoft Bay Area Research Center, we are examining information visualizations for the MyLifeBits project. This project seeks to organize the information available from a person's life in electronic form. With this vast repository of information available, our work seeks to design visualizations that allow people to perceive patterns in their own data sets. More information is available here.
Small Screen Visualizations
Drawing on a small display presents its own challenges. This project seeks to design effective interfaces for use on small displays. To do this, we work on display surface distortion techniques to compress context information while providing a high-resolution focus area where a user can act. More details on this project are available here.
Visualizing User Behavior
Perceiving the activities of users in a ubiquitous environment, thus enabling interaction is another area we are exploring. Interfaces are needed that communicate awareness of the activities of other participants and allow users to control aspects of the environment. Our project page describes the implementation of this controller.
BioMedia: A Multimedia Data Repository
Researchers in Biology, in all fields, capture vast amounts of data. This data, however, is often poorly managed, stored in repositories that are only accessible to one group. Research generated by the community is typically also only available to the research group that produces it. The purpose of this project is to leverage Computer Science know-how in databases and Human-Computer Interaction to design information repositories that are available to the broader research community. More information on our community information repository project, BioMedia, is available here.