HCI2006: The Interface to Science

"Combining Visualisation and Interaction to Facilitate Scientific Exploration and Discovery" run by Elena Zudilova-Seinstra and Tony Adriaansen was a new workshop to HCI2006, though a sequence of events around the theme have run over the last few years.

The aim is to employ HCI research to improve the professional tools available for science research. At present, powerful tools exist but they are hard to use and therefore lack enthusiastic take-up from the end-user, say the organisers. Interactive visualisation (IV) offers a way of broadening access.

The participants split into two groups, each with a specific focus:
* Group I: Design and evaluation, cognitive aspects of interaction with visualised data.
* Group II: Interactive visualisation, distributed collaboration, new display technologies.

They identified a range of problems and solution spaces. A summary of these follows.

Problem 1: Lack of adoption to/of end-users
- involvement of end users in the design and evaluations starting from early prototypes (group I);
- customisations (group I);
- benefits of IV must be accurately communicated to end-user (group II);
- integrate HCI design practices in the software engineering pipeline (group II).

Problem 2: Big and complex data
- development of effective abstractions (group I);
- integration of InfoVis and SciVis (group I);
- high-performance and advanced rendering (group II);
- integration with other technologies (group II).

Problem 3: Interaction with data is complex
- taxonomies and task-dependency (group I)
- new interaction modalities (group II)
- advanced display configurations (group II)

Problem 4: Lack of users
- addressing perceptual issues (group I)
- embedding Vis tools in the everyday workflow (group II)

Problem 5: Lack of theory
- Intense collaboration between HCI and Vis (groups I & II)
- Development of Evaluation Visualisation Frameworks
- Common terminology

Associated Link: The workshop website

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