Abstracts:We define visualization in motion and make several contributions to how to visualize and design situated visualizations in motion. In situated data visualization, the data are directly visualized near their data referent (i.e., the physical space, object, or person it refers to) (Bressa et al., 2022). Situated visualizations are often useful in contexts where the data referent or the viewer does not remain stationary but is in relative motion. For example, a runner looks at visualizations from their fitness band while running. Reading visualizations in such scenarios might be impacted by motion factors. As such, understanding how to best design visualizations with motion factors is important. We define visualizations in motion as visual data representations used in contexts that exhibit relative motion between a viewer and an entire visualization. We propose a research agenda to understand what research opportunities and challenges are under visualization in motion (Yao et al., 2022). Next, we investigate (a) how motion factors can affect the reading accuracy of visualizations (Yao et al., 2022), (b) how to design and embed visualizations in motion in a real application scenario (Yao et al., 2024), and (c) the user experience and design tradeoffs of visualization in motion through a case study (Yao et al., 2024).

Abstracts:Visual analytics (VA) integrates the outstanding capabilities of humans in terms of visual information exploration with the enormous processing power of computers to form a powerful knowledge discovery environment. In other words, VA is the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive interfaces, capturing the information discovery process while keeping humans in the loop. Process mining (PM) is a data-driven and process centric approach that aims to extract information and knowledge from event logs to discover, monitor, and improve processes in various application domains. The combination of interactive visual data analysis and exploration with PM algorithms can make complex information structures more comprehensible and facilitate new insights. Yet, this combination remains largely unexplored. In this article, we illustrate the concepts of VA and PM, how their combination can support the extraction of more insights from complex event data, and elaborate on the challenges and opportunities for analyzing process data with VA methods and enhancing VA methods using PM techniques.

Abstracts:Bus route planning is a complex application problem within the transportation domain, aiming to identify the best route among numerous candidate solutions. Despite existing research significantly reducing the exploration space of solutions, planners still face challenges in further exploring optimal route planning solutions. Specifically, the diversity of route attributes increases the complexity of determining their impact, such as the variety and quantity of reachable points of interest. Therefore, we present BRPVis, an interactive visual analytics system designed to assist bus route planners in exploring optimal solutions through multilevel visualization and rich interaction design. Furthermore, we propose a human–machine collaborative multicriteria decision-making method, which quantitatively analyzes the weights of route attributes while incorporating interactive feedback mechanisms to support personalized route exploration. Based on exploration using real-world traffic datasets, three case studies conducted with domain experts demonstrate that BRPVis effectively provides decision support for bus route planning tasks.

Abstracts:A sphere-mesh is a class of geometric proxies defined as the volume swept by spheres with linearly interpolated centers and radii, potentially striking a good balance between conciseness of representation, simplicity of spatial queries, and expressive power. We investigate the semiautomatic generation of sphere-meshes from standard triangular meshes. We improve one known automatic construction algorithm, based on iterative local coarsening operation, by introducing a mechanism to prevent operations that would result in spheres exceeding the target shape; then, we propose a 3-D interface designed to permit users to easily and intuitively modify the automatically generated sphere-meshes. The two phases, an improved automatic algorithm and a novel interactive tool, used in cascade, constitute a viable semiautomatic way to produce high-quality sphere-meshes. We test our method on several inputs tri-meshes, assess their quality, and finally exemplify the usability of our results by testing them in a few downstream applications.

Abstracts:It is time- and man-power intensive to craft various fish species for underwater animations and games. Even professionals spend hours to days for one. Therefore, we propose procedural fish generation, which presents an innovative and automatic approach to generate 3-D fish models with one lateral image. The core lies in parameterizing the ray-finned fish with curves and optimizing them with textures to fit the input using differentiable rendering, greatly reducing the manual modeling work. It presents advantages over multi-image reconstruction in requiring a single image, while state-of-the-art methods suffer from such a scenario to achieve informative reconstruction. Also, our method outputs a polygon mesh, widely compatible with modern graphics hardware and software, thus facilitating further editing. Furthermore, we fine tune the prompts for Stable Diffusion while users can type a name to find high-quality lateral images. Extensive ablation studies and comparisons have proved its effectiveness and efficiency for experts and nonexperts.

Abstracts:Emerging technologies can be effective in enhancing the teaching–learning process. In this article, virtual reality (VR) is used as a tool to support learning and skill acquisition in a subject of geomatics in an engineering degree. The developed tool is an immersive virtual environment that allows access to a first-person observation of the methodology to be followed in the field to carry out the proposed task. In order to validate this tool, a quasi-experiment was performed involving 170 students and several instruments to assess the knowledge acquisition of these students and their perceptions toward the learning experience. The obtained results indicate that the use of VR in the field of geomatics may be a promising means of conveying new knowledge and enhancing learning and competence acquisition in geomatics.

Abstracts:This article presents an interview with two of the creative talents behind Die-Cast, an immersive performance company based in Philadelphia, PA, USA, conducted by the IEEE CG&A Art on Graphics department via a Zoom video conference on 12 August 2024. The interview provides details about Die-Cast's artistic process and how they support a company manifesto of always meeting audiences where they want and need to be met, which includes both providing access in cyberspace as well as live performances in physical spaces. Since their stories are often larger than can be contained by a typical performance runtime, a novel characteristic of their live performance work is that audience members get to choose what to engage in or delegate that decision to provided tech support that then chooses the path to follow. Analogies regarding visualization approaches to complex phenomena exploration are implicit in discussion.

Abstracts:We present Indigenous Presence, a design principle for partnering with Indigenous communities to make computing tools responsive to Indigenous priorities. Indigenous Presence blends participatory design methodologies with radical relationality, a concept from Critical Indigenous Theory, and theories of presence from virtual and mixed-reality (MR) research. Examples come from a six-year partnership with local Micronesian and Dakota communities that aims, in part, to use MR to revitalize and exchange cultural knowledges of canoes, waters, lands, and skies. Five factors for activating Indigenous Presence are identifed: 1) having a community-relevant topic, 2) including Indigenous makers, 3) creating culturally identifiable experiences, 4) centering radical relationality in design, and 5) respecting Indigenous protocols. Potential benefits include higher ethical standards for computing research along with increased trustworthiness and participation in computing.