Speaker: Aaron Quigley, SACHI University of St Andrews

Abstract:

Our bodies shape our experience of the world, and our bodies influence what we design. How important are the physical differences between people? Can we model the physiological differences and use the models to adapt and personalize designs, user interfaces and artifacts? Within many disciplines Digital Human Models and Standard Observer Models are widely used and have proven to be very useful for modeling users and simulating humans. In this paper, we create personalized digital human models of perception (Individual Observer Models), particularly focused on how humans see. Individual Observer Models capture how our bodies shape our perceptions. Individual Observer Models are useful for adapting and personalizing user interfaces and artifacts to suit individual users’ bodies and perceptions. We introduce and demonstrate an Individual Observer Model of human eyesight, which we use to simulate 3600 biologically valid human eyes. An evaluation of the simulated eyes finds that they see eye charts the same as humans. Also demonstrated is the Individual Observer Model successfully making predictions about how easy or hard it is to see visual information and visual designs. The ability to predict and adapt visual information to maximize how effective it is is an important problem in visual design and analytics.

About Aaron:

In this talk Professor Aaron Quigley will present a talk for a paper he is presenting at the User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (UMAP) conference 2011 on July 12th in Barcelona Spain. This work on Creating Personalized Digital Human Models of Perception for Visual Analytics is the work with and of his former PhD student Dr. Mike Bennett and now postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology in Stanford University.

Professor Aaron Quigley is the Chair of Human Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science at the University of St Andrews. He is the director of SACHI and his appointment is part of SICSA, the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance. Aaron’s research interests include surface and multi-display computing, human computer interaction, pervasive and ubiquitous computing and information visualisation.