Review of “Exploring Interactions with Physically Dynamic Bar Charts”
In “Exploring Interactions with Physically Dynamic Bar Charts,” a paper published in a conference for Human-Computer Interaction, researchers at Lancaster University have begun to explore various interaction techniques designed for physically dynamic bar charts. The physically dynamic bar charts are self-actuating rods capable of color output and touch detection for modifying data. The authors provide a concise presentation of their design and implementation process, and results. It is an interesting perspective to explore this new type of visualization and observe how different interaction techniques affect people’s abilities to complete commonly used visualization tasks.
The purpose of this study was to introduce this new type of visualization and 14 baseline interaction techniques and receive feedback from participants. A user study was carried out with 17 participants to evaluate the techniques to determine which ones were most preferred and effective. Participants were asked to complete four visualization tasks with the baseline interaction techniques. Participants then rated and commented on the techniques. The researchers were able to conclude two major points: (1) interaction techniques varied in user preference based on context of use, and (2) prevalence of touch-screen devices has shown significant influence over interaction techniques.
Based on the data collected, the two major conclusions the author made seem valid. Some of the given tasks required targeting certain data points while other tasks required more of an overall view of the data presented. Thus, the author’s conclusion that different tasks require different techniques is valid. Many participants assumed techniques would be similar to what would be used on touch-screen device, but they were open-minded when introduced to the baseline interaction techniques that involved more direct touch. Although it is important for designers to take advantage of people’s familiarity with touch-screen gestures, it is also important to expand on designs to incorporate the interaction space.
The method of the study proved to be sound and provided significant results. However, one point worth mentioning is the fact that a few of the participants have already been exposed to shape-changing technology. The researchers are unaware if the exposure had been positive or negative, and thus their feedback could be biased.
The authors did a good job providing a written presentation of the study but they did a poor job presenting the data graphically. The one graphical visualization of the data is clumped together and difficult to interpret. It would also be beneficial to include more of the participants’ feedback. It’s understandable that including all the feedback would be difficult and make the paper dull, but many of the conclusions of the paper were plainly stated. There were a few quotes here and there, but other than that, the readers have to take the author’s word regarding the conclusions.
Overall, the study was a successful attempt to gain further insight on these new physically dynamic bar charts and its various interaction techniques. To further the study, researchers should measure how accurate these interaction techniques could perform with certain tasks.
Literature Cited
Taher, F., Hardy, J., Karnik, A., Weichel, C., Jansen, Y., Hornbæk, K., & Alexander, J. (2015, April). Exploring interactions with physically dynamic bar charts. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 3237-3246). ACM.
