Research

Seminar: “Data Exploration on Smart watches” by Dr Rachel Menzies

rachel menzies

Abstract:

For many of us, interacting with data on mobile devices such as phones and tablets is commonplace in our lives, e.g. phone call data, TV guide, maps, fitness and wearable data. With the introduction of smart watches, the screen size of mobile devices has dramatically decreased. This reduction in screen real estate provides challenges for the design of interfaces, including the presentation and exploration of data visualisations. Using bar charts as an example, this presentation will explore the shortcomings of current zooming techniques on very small screens and consider proposed guidelines for the development of simple data exploration applications. Key design features such as the need for overview and context will be considered in respect to a simple and effective data exploration task.

 

Biography:

Rachel Menzies is a lecturer and Head of Undergraduate Studies (Computing) at the School of Science and Engineering at the University of Dundee. Her research interests include user centred design with marginalised user groups, such as users with disabilities, as well as exploring novel interfaces, data visualisation and CS education. Rachel is an Accessibility and Usability Consultant with the Human Centred Computing Consultancy, run by the University of Dundee, and has worked for many large international clients as well as providing bespoke training sessions to small companies.

Event details

  • When: 23rd February 2016 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33
  • Series: School Seminar Series
  • Format: Seminar, Talk

Distinguished Lecture Series: ‘CS for All’ by President Maria Klawe

The School of Computer Science is delighted to announce that President Maria Klawe will be speaking at our Distinguished Lecture Series on March 31st 2016 in St Andrews. This event will consist of a series of talks from 9am with a tea/coffee break, a lunch break, afternoon talk and Q&A session. Maria Klawe2

Biography

Maria Klawe became Harvey Mudd College’s fifth president in 2006. She joined Harvey Mudd from Princeton University after serving 14 years at the University of British Columbia. Prior to UBC, Klawe spent eight years with IBM Research in California and two years at the University of Toronto. She received her PhD (1977) and BSc (1973) in mathematics from the University of Alberta. In addition to numerous other commitments, Klawe is a member of the boards of Microsoft Corporation, Broadcom Corporation and the nonprofit Math for America and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

Distinguished Lecture Series

Lecture 1 starting at 09:00hrs: Computing for all in K-12 education

Lecture 2 starting at 11:00hrs:  Computing for all in undergraduate education

Lecture 3 starting at 14:00hrs: Computing for all in research

There will be a Q & A session between 15:00hrs and 15:30hrs, followed by the opportunity to meet President Klawe informally in the foyer.

Event details

  • When: 31st March 2016 09:00 - 16:00
  • Where: Byre Theatre
  • Series: Distinguished Lectures Series
  • Format: Distinguished lecture

Palimpsest recognised by British Library Labs

A new annual competition set up to identify outstanding and innovative work, created using the British Library’s digital collections and content, has recognised Palimpsest. The 2015 British Library Labs Awards honoured projects within three key categories: Research, Creative/Artistic and Entrepreneurship. Palimpsest: Telling Edinburgh’s Stories with Maps, was runner up in the Research category.

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Congratulations to Uta, David and Aaron on the continued success of Palimpsest.

IEEE talks: JEEVES and the Speculative W@nderverse

In October 2015 we attended two IEEE conferences in the USA. Daniel Rough presented a full paper at the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, October 18–22, in Atlanta, Georgia. Uta Hinrichs presented a full paper at the IEEE Information Visualization (InfoVis) conference as part of VizWeek, October 25-30 in Chicago, Illinois. You can find details of these and all our papers on the publications page.

On November 10th, Daniel and Uta will reprise their talks here in St Andrews and everyone is welcome to attend. You can find the details for the two talks below along with links to the papers via the University of St Andrews research portal.

Talk 1 by Daniel Rough
Title: Jeeves – A Visual Programming Environment for Mobile Experience Sampling
Authors: Rough, D and Quigley, A.

Abstract: The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) captures participants’ thoughts and feelings in their everyday environments. Mobile and wearable technologies afford us opportunities to reach people using ESM in varying contexts. However, a lack of programming knowledge often hinders researchers in creating ESM applications. In practice, they rely on specialised tools for app creation. Our initial review of these tools indicates that most are expensive commercial services, and none utilise the full potential of sensors for creating context-aware applications.

We present “Jeeves”, a visual language to facilitate ESM application creation. Inspired by successful visual languages in literature, our block-based notation enables researchers to visually construct ESM study specifications. We demonstrate its applicability by replicating existing ESM studies found in medical and psychology literature. Our preliminary study with 20 participants demonstrates that both non-programmers and programmers are able to successfully utilise Jeeves. We discuss future work in extending Jeeves with alternative mobile technologies.

Paper details from the St Andrews Research Portal: Rough, DJ & Quigley, AJ 2015, ‘ Jeeves – a visual programming environment for mobile experience sampling ‘, IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC), Atlanta, United States

 

Talk 2 by Uta Hinrichs

Title: Speculative Practices: Utilizing InfoVis to Explore Untapped Literary Collections

Authors:
Hinrichs, U.,  Forlini, S. ; Moynihan, B.
Abstract:
In this paper we exemplify how information visualization supports speculative thinking, hypotheses testing, and preliminary interpretation processes as part of literary research. While InfoVis has become a buzz topic in the digital humanities, skepticism remains about how effectively it integrates into and expands on traditional humanities research approaches. From an InfoVis perspective, we lack case studies that show the specific design challenges that make literary studies and humanities research at large a unique application area for information visualization. We examine these questions through our case study of the Speculative W@nderverse, a visualization tool that was designed to enable the analysis and exploration of an untapped literary collection consisting of thousands of science fiction short stories. We present the results of two empirical studies that involved general-interest readers and literary scholars who used the evolving visualization prototype as part of their research for over a year. Our findings suggest a design space for visualizing literary collections that is defined by (1) their academic and public relevance, (2) the tension between qualitative vs. quantitative methods of interpretation, (3) result- vs. process-driven approaches to InfoVis, and (4) the unique material and visual qualities of cultural collections. Through the Speculative W@nderverse we demonstrate how visualization can bridge these sometimes contradictory perspectives by cultivating curiosity and providing entry points into literary collections while, at the same time, supporting multiple aspects of humanities research processes.

Published in:
IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics,  (Vol:22, Issue: 1 )  Page(s): 429 – 438
ISSN :  1077-2626
DOI:     10.1109/TVCG.2015.2467452

Paper details from the St Andrews Research Portal:
Hinrichs, U, Forlini, S & Moynihan, B 2015, ‘ Speculative practices: utilizing InfoVis to explore untapped literary collections ‘ IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics .

Event details

  • When: 10th November 2015 14:00 - 15:00
  • Where: Cole 1.33a
  • Format: Talk

Distinguished Lecture: ‘Scalability and Fault-tolerance, are they the same?’ by Joe Armstrong

The first of this academic year’s distinguished lectures will be given by Professor Joe Armstrong, co-inventor of Erlang, on Monday 16th November 2015 at The Byre Theatre.Joe Armstrong

Abstract:

To build a scalable system the important thing is to make small isolated independent units. To scale up we just add more units. To build a fault-tolerant system the important thing to do is make small isolated independent units…. Does that sound familiar? Haven’t I seen that somewhere before? Oh yes, in the first paragraph! So maybe scalability and fault tolerance are really different names for the same thing.

This property of systems, namely that fault-tolerant systems were also scalable, was noticed years ago, notably in the design of the Tandem computer system. The Tandem was design for fault tolerance but rapidly became a leading supplier of scalable computer platforms. Thus it was with Erlang.

Erlang followed  a lot of the Tandem design, it was built for fault-tolerance but some of the most successful applications  (such as WhatsApp) use it for its scalability.

In this lecture I’ll talk about the intimate relationship between scalability and fault-tolerance and why they are architecturally the same thing.

I’ll talk about the design of Erlang and why scalable systems have to be built on non-shared memory abstractions.

Bio:

Joe Armstrong has been programming since 1967. He invented the programming language Erlang. He has worked as a programmer, founded a few successful companies and written a few books. He has a PHD in Computer Science from KTH. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Computer Science at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Event details

  • When: 16th November 2015 09:15 - 15:30
  • Where: Byre Theatre
  • Series: Distinguished Lectures Series
  • Format: Distinguished lecture

PhD Viva Success: C. J. Davies

Congratulations to CJ Davies, who successfully defended his thesis today. CJ is pictured below with supervisor Dr Alan Miller and Dr Luke Hutton. Dr Ishbel Duncan acted as internal examiner and external examiner was Prof. Vic Callaghan from the University of Essex.

DSC_5374

Professor Ian Miguel’s Inaugural Lecture

Staff and students from the School of Computer Science attended Prof. Ian Miguel’s Inaugural Lecture in St Salvator’s Quadrangle yesterday evening. The well-received and highly accessible lecture titled “Constraint Satisfaction and the Crystal Maze”, was accompanied by a reception in Lower College Hall. Many will remember celebrating Ian’s installation as a new Professor at December graduation last year. Inaugural lectures provide newly appointed professors the opportunity to inform colleagues, the student community and the general public of their research interests and future plans.

Professor Ian Miguel's Inaugural Lecture

Professor Ian Miguel’s Inaugural Lecture