Selected Research Projects

Collaborative Visualization

People often work simultaneously over large visual worksurfaces such as tabletops or whiteboards. Current digital collaboration and visualization technology does not yet support the seamless collaboration that is possible with traditional surfaces. We also do not understand how users work together to analyze data. We are developing and evaluating visual display and interaction techniques to support collaborative data analysis, with a focus on people working together in the same place at the same time. One focus application is business intelligence.

Computer Support for Building Design and Construction

Building design is a complex collaborative process. Stakeholders including architects, electrical, mechanical, and structural engineers, owners, and user groups must work together to coordinate various aspects of a design. Current practice involves coordinating large amounts of paper-based information such as design schematics, costs, and schedules.We are designing digital support tools and visualization techniques to help architects, engineers, and construction teams manage large and diverse sources of information and coordinate their design efforts.

Multidimensional Data Visualization

Multidimensional data analysis is important in many fields. For example, a biologist might measure plant size in numerous ways (height, stalk width, leaf width, leaf length, etc.) and then wish to examine relationships amoung those measurements for a variety of plants. We are exploring methods to visualize multidimensional data, including techiques such as scatterplot matrices (left) and dimensionality reduction. We are also studying new interaction techniques for working with multidimensional visualizations.