Reports directly to academic council—unusual
Independent of faculties, do a lot of independent work
Give faculty to work at one of the largest display centres in Europe
Bioinformatics, industrial design, data fusion, aviation dynamics, flight, tank simulation
Jacobson talks about N/X, IST Reference Model
Introduces Varga Varga as Chair of RTG 007
Definition of visualisation
Evaluation for acquisition vs. eval for research vs. eval for iterative design
IST-05 Reference Model
Maps model to OODA loop
Six questions listed
Uses Santorini fresco picture as example of "visualisation system", goes through
and asks the 6 questions wrt this fresco
Some questions answered better than others (first three better than latter three)
Translucency
Foregrounding/backgrounding—less important objects placed higher up, further
back away from viewer
Fresco as interactive interface for "marine tasking order"
Click on elements of boat (captain, navigator) brings up relevant information
e.g., for captain, basic mission statement; navigator-route map, etc.
Don’t go to places set back, go to welcoming people, up royal road, to theatrical
area
Questions implied by questions ie.., Q1 becomes Q1a, Q1b, etc.
Eg.., what is user trying to achieve vs. Q1a who is the user?
In this case, captain, navigator, etc.
Q2 can user perceive there is progress
A2a, by scrolling whether ships have been assigned, departure and arrival locations,
ISSUE; How should the MTO Author be made aware if tasking has been completed.
Put an yellow or red x when task is incomplete
What affects the user’s ability to perceive
A4.1 fresco interface is physically long, so related items may not obviously
connect with each other
Solution: ensure that there are engines to test consistency among items such
as route map and text, captain’s timing orders
Red and yellow x’s provide alerting capability (Q6)
Word "interactively" in definition of visualisation ties in with most of the
questions
Engines, navigation, section (select relevant data), selection, various
7 Steps for evaluation
what user wants to achieve,
perceive,
choose,
ability to perceive,
ability to control,
two others
Visual text mining for technology watch
Spot relations among elements of text in massive corpus—conceptual/meaningful
relations
Identify clusters of similar items, and scant conceptual regions—concepts not
represented in the data set
Search tasks: find the documents I need to read; find out where imp’t areas
of confluence are, and areas that should have confluence but do not
Vision allows us to choose those 3D elements of the scene relevant to the task,
e.g., driving
VITA visual interface for text analysis
Concepts identified by search engines top plane
Hits produced by search engines middle level
Bottom level is documents
Hits are small cylinders inside larger cylinder representing the document
Yellow spheres represent concepts
Artificial gravity moves private/sergeant away from other officer ranks
Second example shows that this approach not very scalable to large datasets
Autonomy visualizer (autonomy is a search engine)
Allows us to see how "V. Taylor" relates to "risk management"
in Jacobson’s email
Color coding and size show previously visited pages "visual trail" (green cylinders
are previously visited vs grey; size of smaller cylinder inside gets smaller
as pages get older)
Nice clustering of nation and biological weapon (Iran-botulism; Iraq-sarin)
Asked six questions with respect to VITA
Use-Technology Watch
Treat taxonomy as query, and database as names of applications
UkENDo
Support concept for creation and use of doctrines
Configuration of sensors and effectors on ship
System optimization of onboard systems
Parameter settings based on doctrines
Task: develop concept of use for work with doctrines
Development of demonstrator for the support concept
Demonstrator made of components
Situational data and doctrines feed into to main controller incl Inference engine
Controller incorporates working memory, and output sets operational parameters
Output produces displays to show values of operational parameters
need UI for inputting, editing scenario, own ship data
UI for inputting editing time tables and rules
UI for displaying operational parameters
UI for defining simulation time, starting simulation, and monitoring rules activity
Now with ref to IST-05 model
lists
Dataspace: op parameters, op settings, technical and tactical situations, and
from doctrines
Engines
I/o devices
Visualising technical tactical situations
Rule structures/sequence
Inference process
Operator notification
Two types of user: navy officers, navy operators
Officers structure sort rules to create PDB/MDB
Trigger MDB by scenarios for tests/simulations
Operators need to monitor tactical situation k, and react to operator notification
Information Fusion
NATO Task Group on Information Fusion (TgonIF)
Want to develop a technology demonstrator for follow on work (TgonIFD)
Objective: JDL Data Fusion Level 2 (situation assessment) and Level 3 (Threat
Assessment), in an ASC of a Combined/Joint HQ while in Peace Support Ops
May switch to anti-terrorism ops
Data fusion process model
Diagram
Sources, pre-processing, object refinement, situation refinement, threat refinement,
leading to HCI
DBMS (support database, fusion database) feeds in at all levels
Level 4 Process Refinement
Tasks of TG on IF: Develop Conceptual Model of ASC, Develop and Evaluate Functional
Model of the ASC, Identify Functions that could be Automated
Operational Preparation of the Battlespace (OPB)
Physical, socio-political and operational environment lead to OPB, lead to C2
command support
Physical environment breakdown
Social political environment: cabinet, media, CIMIC, host cultural considerations,
allied and host political considerations
Operational environment G1, G2, etc.
ASC in Peace Support Ops
Military, disaster, socio-political, IS/COIN, and Crime Reports
Need to be classified, correlated, aggregated, and situation views created for
presentation to the commander
ASC OODA Loop
G3 Cell (Commander) gives G@ Officerr Blue situation
G2 Orientat, Decide, then Act
Leads to Direction: Produce Collection Plan
Collect SANDAs, collate & evaluate,
Process (PCS), Process IPB, Disseminate to G3, G2, and other customers if good
SA otherwise, seek additional information
Information Fusion
3 processes: classification, correlation, aggregation
class doees either ORBAT (organization of battle) independent or dependent classification
of information
correlation reduces data set and enhances info content by fusing information
contained in the reports
aggreagation procedss reduces detail by aggregating situation elements to a
higher level entity
DFD data fusion demonstrator
e.g., Observe three tanks, determine unit type based on equipment type and category
based on military knowledge (GEFC), show tank company symbol, then determine
command level, and modify symbol accordingly
correlation e.g., wondering if tank company A moved from C or B, know that there is road to C not B, so C more probable
aggregation
situation three tank companies moving west
moving in pattern, if pattern matches template (e.g, staying about 1-2 km apart)
presume they belong to same battalion
result new tank battalion symbol shown
scenario
IFOR multinational division (MND) IFOR into Banja Luke region of Bosnia-Herz
Themes:
Movementof forces back to barracks
Displayed population and ethnic resistance
Political structures, crime involvement,
Infrastructure needs,
Non Government Organization (NGO)
Conceptual model (level 0)
Divide insurgent cell into packages, divide packages among nations
Conclusion:
Conceptual model of MIC (multinational intelligence cell)
Operational demos for follow on project
Counterterrorism
HCI not Topic of TG on IF
Observer Relative Data Extraction
Catalog of stars 50GB database
Visualization systems cannot show all data, also observer moving through space
certain info shown, certain info not
Observer related data extraction
Show visible objects, show objects with specified visibility levels
Objects that will become (in) visible, objects that might be visible soon
Objects along a path
Create tree structure to access the data: tree orders objects according to
visibility factor
Also a second storage access tructure B-Tree
Visibility factor VF is function of two parameters object, and observer
Visible objects function of DB, Obs, and rho
Show me all items that have a visibility factor greater than rho (criterion)
But this is insufficient because it ignores importance/size of items
Leads to need to cluster, hierarchy
VR is minmal bounding squre (MBS), brightness color could be incorporated
In MBS objects are visible
Have hierarhcial structure of MBRs and MBSs
Group clusters of MBRs in hierarchical sequence
MBRs internal notes
MBSs leafnodes
Can pack more objects into leaf 1kb nodes
Advantage for leafnode greatest with 3D objects
Three cases of queries: Perfect, Conservative, Optimistic
Ranges are as is, enlarged, reduced, respectively
point query (observer cursor position as input), vs. window query (region defined) treated in each case
related work: dynamic index structure for spatial searching R-Tree
X-Tree, SS, Sr, TPR trees
Kd tree, quad/Oct-Trees, etc.
Idea: Experimental work comparing human effectiveness finding targets using
different algorithms
Idea: Way to transition between global and local views?
http://www.cs.auc.dk/~linb/ (Publications
link) linb@cs.auc.dk
Demo in large circular display room, with stereo
Color data sets, scatterplots
Allows various Assignment of colors to conceptual dimensions
Can cycle through over time
Can see all as separate three way graphs in one space (lots of little 3 way
graphs)
Idea: integration of mapping issues with visual momentum ideas—need way to transition
between different coding approaches
CPOF: Observations regarding principles
Many visualizations over two years, lots of issues
Start with description of CPOF
Tailored visualizations: specific visualizations that align to user and to task
domain
Functional, Inventive, and Process Objectives
Get rid of icons, bring in blobology
Membranes—synthesis of aggregation and details
Provide an at-a-glance comprehensibility of force attributes
Lots of experimentation
Process: See users, do design, test design
SMEs are active participants and provide requirements
Blobs should have see, shoot, and sense attributes
Dynamic force strneght varies with density power contact
Blobs relative to function
Composite blobs: show subentities
Have dimensions of strength
Representation treatments vs. behavior treatments
e.g., ring thickness vs. movement, density
do dynamic blos lead to greater understanding of important situation elements?
Do dynamic blobs help command discern patterns in the battlespace
Answer yes to both questions vs. control
Used simulation halt technique—importance of questions not assessed
Block Parties up to 1-6 Tactical Decision Games about 50
Force on Force Visualizations
Shows the CPOF displays
Bars used to represent attrition data
Incorporates brushing
Trying to show timeline data over geographic terrain, vectors fading over time
Circular blobs not working in urban terrain
Don’t get doubling of performance
Blob structure
Allow rich complex shapes for blobs that reveal details without overwhelming
Idea: How to map blob shape to task, measure effectiveness
Detection of direction of momentum
Five different conditions
Shoot spikes, use of yellow to indicate when engaged
Blob edge thicker direction of orientation
Vs. no shoot spikes, no directional blob edge
Best vs. complex (with shoot spikes and all icons) vs. simple (just significant
icons, and just shoot spikes) vs. 2D traditional icons, flat map
Best worked best
20-30% improvement over traditional
details important to commander
Can we try to design with this in mind
Change blobs to suit what’s important at a given time
Got away from circles—circles were hiding important properties
Hiding relevant data
Outline/membrane approach—membrane being drawn around footprint of unit
Assumptions about data sources: radio frequency tags, digital compasses, tactical
inference engines
Individual symbols shown when zoomed in; when zoomed out get the membrane
Some principles of graphic design
Design is purposeful, for specific audiences
www.mundidesign.com
use of color perspective, layout
observations ‡ principles
use a methology
engage users
allow two-way learning: users and technologists
be aware
application of principles tricky
don’t use color
the more specific the visulization the more effective it is
let the data speak
intuitive means no legend
placeholders wdont’ work
rez,‡ can’t substitute with fake data
generate blobs from entity data
don’t use blobs for fewer entities
Wright’s list—use of color discussion
Jacobson: I like color, want to be able to use it
M. Taylor: color coding issues—don’t use color hue to indicate quantity, but hue
used to indicate a category (red forces vs. blue forces) is good
Color saturation can be used to indicate amount with some success, although
straight luminance/greyscale probably works just as well
Wright noted that use color as last resort
Jan Terje Bjorke: Discussion of Wright’s displays how memorable they were vs.
data shown in VR media lab
Hollands pointed out how the data types different
Wright made point about need for data to be realistic—accept no substitutes
V. Taylor: can’t always get real data
How to show uncertainty with blobs
Eric: Comparisons about visualizations
Augmented reality
Provides constraints, a formal language of a sort
Vs. complete freedom
Eric: Use of color—good for perceptual grouping
V. Taylor: need to know who users are
Try to be perfect: zack points out that can never do that
Wright says need principles, if you don’t get it perfect, people see the imperfection,
distracted by them
Emphasis on medium over message
Eric: set reference for level of quality you want
M. Taylor: calibrating level of quality with attention
DREO story about radar; stopped Canada’s involvement in holographic radar
Fresco e.g., highlighting important information
V. Taylor: different display formats, devices, PDA vs. large display
Must transmit as little as possible in small devices
Wright: generals with laptop
Smestad: what is meant by "at a glance" visualization
Relates to Ward Page attention comment
Wright: time to comprehend reduced when "at a glance"
Bad presentation systems, given enough time, can be interpreted
Varga: Wrightl’s presentation on tailored visualization; what should the rest
of us do
Wright says it’s diff between data viz vs. info viz.
Data viz has much less mapping between conceptual and perceptual dimensions
Jacobson: need incremental progress from one to another
Varga: don’t peak too early
Virtual reality as part of viz—using data and mapping it to time is one way
to go from data to information visualisatio
Bukauskas: what about air force?
Wright: Army aviation (helos) move like tanks
Bukauskas: would you use color for blobs?
Wright: Blobs not relevant, they are abstractions for hundreds of entities
V. Taylor: # of user interfaces and what each shows
Wright: interesting issue
Da Silva Verissimo: why did you switch representational scheme for Vita
Jacobson: wasn’t clear how things clustered with large datasets
V. Taylor: liked old version b/c could open up page easily
V. Taylor: wants feedback
How to select in 3D, likes idea of putting crown of thorns in Eric’s display
Demos and Tours
Birgit Holme Frederiksen
5000 visitors to centre
goal to establish centre of excellence for research and eduction, and projects
with industry within visualisation and VR technology
passive stereo—one lens polarized horizontally; the other vertically
green vs. purple
Onyx 16 CPUs 2 Gb RAM, Polhemus fasttrack motion tracking
Lightwave matrix-hub—switches output among display units
CAVE floor is plexiglass 2.5 m x 2.5 m x 2.5 m
Back projection
Active stereo
1 observer with tracking and a few without
Brief discussion: me: Perfection vs. transparency—what was meant by perfection was really transparency
Topic: sonar tactical decision aid
Background, issues
Expected improvement in amount and quality of sonar data, and analytical models
ASW is a thinking war
Focus on one command level
Temperature in ocean varies in layers; temperature affects sonar
Sweet spots, shadows
Range on bearing—one dimensional in multidimensional world
Why not use isosurface—allows you to draw contours in a 3D volume
Got sketches from users
Came up with framework of linked views
Environment view (big), thumbnails, range summary (2d), key plan 2D map, acoustic
volume analyzer (3D)
Acoustic volume analyzer: Range vs. bearing at a number of bearings makes 3D
object, can see 2D versions on wall of space
Key plan—incorporates traditional symbols: make new work with old
Show areas that have been searched
Add or manipulate assets and asset tracks
"what if" planning tool
thumbnails
save the result set—good for a period of time
model runs taken at different times
eg. At 40, 100, 300 m
kept existing way of doing things—original 2D graph—activity at one bearing, different depths
what if playing with cutoff points on isovalues, isosurface
slider bars to change AN, FOM, POD—where you cutoff the values
ambient noise
FOM figure of merit
POD prob of detection
SV sound velocity
linked views—if changing depth in one view, other views should also be updated
if you play with your azimuth slice (bearing)
M. Taylor: how do you ensure that links are obvious
"make things live"
principle of dynamic query—ensure quick enough update rate
expose complexity of what operators dealing with to command level
Immersive Education Ltd.
Virtual Reality on Portable Devices
Large data on small amounts of silicon
Oxford U. Intel Education Initiative—why is software not doing a good job in
education
Take enjoyment of games, bring into education environment
Games use large amount of illusion with minimum of hardware
Millions of polygons
Game called "Republic"
Populated city environment
Newspaper found on street gets read, bolts on metal handrails realistic—progressively
more detailed info as zoom in, done with software
Integrated physics system
Set up role playing situations between characters and props
Dynamic lighting, shading
Jacobson: do you have any potential applications (hammer without nails)—do you
have any nails
Walker: not from this group
V. Taylor/Wright: Millions of polygons—why no problem?
Amount of redundancy in data set
Broad: Simplicity of architectural forms vs. natural objects
M. Taylor: pre-existing polygons vs. creating them on the fly
Walker: Parthenon demo—took 6 man-months to create
(in response to Wright’s question: how long does it take to build these models)
model of athena inside, generally model quite realistic
shadows within objects but not across
M. Taylor suggests that we use Smestad’s principles to discuss Wright’s visualizations
Smestad needed to show his guidelines
Hollands reminding M. Taylor/Wright about using M. Taylor’s guidelines vs. Wright’s visualizations
Sonar as domain
M. Taylor:explains his model
What does the user need to achieve: SA (Wright)
Wright: need task decomposition
Start with users: principal sonar/warfare officer, commander
PSO supervise sonar operators, involves equipment operation
M. Taylor: operators can be considered engines in the model
Hollands nature of data changes—commander getting/wants verbal declarative info.,
when operators data is probabilistic
To operators, engines operate on the raw sonar information
Engine algorithm understands current flows, temperature, salinity, etc.
Engines access historical database
Ray trace model
Output of model run compared to bathymetric data, etc.
M. Taylor: all these things in the dataspace
What info is sonar officer providing: probability or definitive
Active vs. passive sonar, deploy sonar or not, where to go, where to look
M makes analogy to chess player
Operator has to drive engines to look for patterns in oceans—shifts in arranged
data
Bjorke: probablility concept of response tied to application;
M: app is reason for doing this
Wright what is transformation—is transformation between situations between where
probability is relevant vs. not relevant
JT driving car 10 km/hr 10 m is long; but at 100 km/hr, 10 m is short
Different probabilities occur in each situation
M brakes on vs. not brakes on
Communication of geographical relations: Natural language and context dependent
visualization
Perception of distance scaling
Perception of Topological relations
Contexts: user’s perceptual properties, properties of equipment, one other
Comm. Levels: syntactic, semantic level, pragmatic level
Map classes: reading maps, seeing maps, communicating maps
Bertin’s visual variables—changes in coding allow pattern to be seen
Processing maps one map per variable
Communicating map
Perceptual variables
Amount of information is limited by map users
In communicating map have grouped information into classes and by this reduced
amount of information
Scaling symbols with changes in map scale
Algorithm: eliminate the most conflicting element until the value gets its
max value
Max r value with condition optimal symbol size
Eliminate conflicting elements and comput an ptimal symbol size
Demonstrates application of Shannon’s information theory
Context determined by application area
Application of fuzzy logic
Use natural language sentences: e.g., distance from the airport to AOI is short
Apply membership functions 0-1 which describes probability statement is correct
Plots of membership functions for distance from airport, cheap hotel, etc.
Hollands wants all three—intersection operators from fuzzy logic—get a certain
set of hotels
If strongly recommend assign Yager operator (e.g., 0.8), then only one hotel
gets value greater than zero
Scatterplots are 2D maps
Iconic reps vs. linguistic sentences
Assignment of descriptors (small, large, very large) to graphical representations
divided bar—an iconic representation of magnitude
Distance between points can be used as an icon—scale the distances with respect
to frame zoom
Linguistic description of topological relations
Crisp vs. fuzzy relations: how much is B inside A
Eight possibilities: disjoing, meet, equal inside, covered by, contains, covers,
overlaps
(2 x 2 table)
fuzzy interior vs. fuzzy boundary
developing icons to represent these concepts, and natural language word sequences
e.g., to low, medium, high degree B overlaps A, etc.
Conclusions: do not overload user with info
Need for map design based on soft computing—fuzzy logic
Natural language sentences based on evaluations of quantiatitve data at nominal
level
General cartographic communication model—how to create communicating map
Excellent talk get this guy’s papers
Q&A: how to coalesce do not overload with give the users all the data
Wright: give them as much as possible with out overloading them; depends on user
Bjorke: Complexity comes from multiple views (over time)
VR for decision support in urban planning
Project at the VR Media Lab
Need to make model for visualiations so that ideas could be presented to town
council
Model: reusing texture frees up memory (reference to earlier presentation
contourlines,
road-project
orthophoto
billboards (trees, hedges, lights, signs)—only use two polygons, always pointing
against viewer
houses, photographed existing houses
other elements
primary req: as few polygons as possible, refresh rate at least 30 Hz
view should be as realistic as possible
consequences
use billboards, object splitting (split model into whole objects)—objects behind
not in CPU
as smooth as possible surfaces
photographic low res textures
VML model, plugin from maxim
Presentation in virtual envionment concave display
First minutes of silence when show to town council
A few insecure questions
Then heavy discussion
Removed buildings that were placed badly, had no view
Added green areas
New infrastructure
Increased distance between buildings
Decided to allow only one story housing
Survey
Have you seen the environment before—how high are your expectations to the presentation
Did the presentation clarify issues in the project Yes
Did the presentation influence the acceptance of the project
People who sought that presentation already wanted it , so no real change
How important was mobility and iteractivity in the model? Important
Mono/stereo—mono was good for town model
Was presentation worth the money--$6-7K
Texture model made in 5 days; texturing takes time 18 students 6 weeks
Primarily the modelling work, secondary the large display system
Interaction was very important
Second round
Discussions got much more into detail and even more intensive
Center for 3D Geoinformation
$2.5 million project funded by EU
Large Scale 3D Landscape Information Model
140 km wide x 160 km high
1 m resolution
Laser, GIS< Aerial Photo, Databases
complete model of towns and rural areas around Aalborg (north Jutland)
can depicit temporal changes in structure of landscape last 10 years
Major Danish Mapand Geodata providers as partners
Lasserscanning used to detect landscape
Lasers make trees look like little mountains—laser coming straight down
Resolution of laser scanner
Can remove trees using algorithm
Dune formation
Data scanning provides terrain model
Photo superimposed
Can use horizontal laser scanning by driving past buildings
Forest
www.Blueberry3d.com
—swedish company
Allows tremendous resolution as you zoom in
Thematic data and 3D models—superimposing borders of fields over 3D model
Want to present over PDA
My question about design process affecting the kinds of decisions made, put
greater distance between houses, ensure houses don’t block views, etc. may bias
against costs
A: noncommittal, but yes the process does affect the decisions
Wright: Trees and houses separate data level? A Yes
Two source data sets height field and data overlay A multiple source, lots of
databases
Wright transportation, systems populations, A yes sure, would like to extend into
that area, but not right now
Wright could be useful for PDA
What kind of technical architecture—how to generate PDA material and deliver
it
Jacobson: Spend time on Smestad’s sheet.
Smestad’ places 13 guidelines on left
Visual summary Diagram on right
Uses the guidelines to assess one of Wright’s business diagrams floor/walls
stock information
Diagram supports many of points
Hollands pointed out coding schemes issues
Dynamic motion makes interpretation of different colors more obvious—some columns
hang down
Visual structure—how many units available at a time graph represents this
5 projects within DACCIS
with each project are 4 phases
Operational User Group (OUG) set up especially for the DACCIS project, reporting
directly to the AOC (Army Operational Command)
AMC Army Material Command, Maersk Data, OUG are three parties involved in project
management
Brigade level—best guess organization 4 different HQs in brigade
not enough people for 24 hr period
DACCIS users should require less training than conventional system
Company educates instructors, instructors educate end users
Means end users don’t have to wait for next course at school
About half Danish Army are reserve
Developoment process include obtaining use cases = understanding tasks
Ie.., use cases = tasks
4 stages of workshop
goal: operational mid 2003
WS1 paper pencil,
WS2 look and feel
WS3 wizard of Oz get correct dialog, although may not be working properly
Hardware
AMC use COTS products ruggedized
Strong emphasis on ruggedization leads to abuse of equipment (gets dropped more
often)
"never paint it green"—will lead to abuse
material has to function in an APC (army personnel carrier)
Phase 1 MSOffice, GIS, C2 planning and operational execution tools
Military message-handling system
Phase 2 much more functionality—specialized for G1…G6
Conceptual architecture: NT,MSSQL server
Need multiple servers: Application Server, Domain server, comms server
Interoperability difficult
DACCIS based on ATCCIS data model
Also AdatP3 for specific systems (air naval, heros, CWS, UAV)
For army, need information from neighbouring army units (via ATCCIS)
ATCCIS: working group create a data model, and replication model involving
many NATO countries incl. US, UK, CA
Too much engineers, not enough army
Data Model is ATCCIS General Hub 4 (for phase 2)
Replication model ATCCIS Replication Model
Denmark and Norway only countries with small contracts
Currently at phase 1
Data model includes relations between data;
visualization is a national implementation
Wright’s question: Expert Users changing every 2 years; what do you do to figure
it out
Answer: have to say OK, this was the best info we had, stick with original plan
Smestad: how many use cases?
A: about 200
Users want lots of map—most of DACCIS is map display
Scanned maps with scrolling and zoom
Move map with gesture
Select viewing vector by gesture (line of sight), get terrain profile, maintained
on map afterwards
Area of sight also possible—what you can see from that location
Phase 2 will incorporate 3D button
Zooming by selection of rectangular area by gesture
Can select particular features to be plotted in the maps using check boxes
Select objective area by selecting circle symbol as in drawing program, again
uses gesture to do this
Attack arrow—multi-headed possible based on user’s demand despite fact that
violates NATO standard
Number of heads indicates phase/order of attack (this group attacks first, that
second)
Select symbology from palette as in drawing tool
Task organization shown as hierarchy using Windows conventions (like win Explorer)
Selecting properties for particular units done with selection of unit, and modifying
content of dialog box
Interactive whiteboard part of system
Problem with shadows/blocking
Developed special purpose stick for reaching far side of display
Different levels of commander have different access to plan—commanding officer
can review/edit/approve plans of junior officer
Artillery position field of fire for different weapons done by selecting symbol from palette; angle range chosen and is adjustable to produce pie slice
Palette choices affected by G2-G4 check boxes
APP6alpha (APP6A) same as mil std 2525
Right click on symbol, select history, shows track
Old problem of different locations on different officer’s maps
Shared displays—all information now common
Outlook used for mail
Gesture recognition/keyboard at whiteboard
Symbols need to be scaled with zoom
Echelon
Combat effectiveness/combat
power—allowing a comparison of battle forces, our tank vs. their tank
Smestad: changing scale—computationally too difficult when scale is extreme
A: distance from map determines which symbols shown
V. Taylor: how much of phase 1 kept in phase 2
A; intention is to use it all; add new areas (e.g., helos, other Gs)
Programming will be redone; human interface same
Varga: use more saturated colors
A: yes plan to do that
Wright: deploy down to battalion level
A; yes
Wright what is purpose
A; Reduces # of staff meetings for planning
Unkown: What was granularity of Line of sight computation
A; 25 m
U: could you take it to Kosovo and use
A; Can take any map, geo reference it, and that is your source
Going to talk about BDA and evaluation usabilty problems
CAOC wide
Air tasking order data in spreadsheet
Get summary of planned mission in bar chart
Problem bar chart not scalable
Table viewer
Field search
Also have problems
Table links spreadsheet-color coded in terms of level
Visually query database
Select value that is required in each field
1D connections,
2D connections
Crown of Thorns 3D—show database linkages
2D using color
feature plot—table with color
other views shown
like map view
V. Taylor: how do you get new technology to old spaces (people)
A: younger people more attuned to graphical representation
Gradual process of accommodation to new technologies
V. Taylor: research institutes looking at new technologies that may have application
down the road
Difficulty occurs when get genuine user, they have their own tunnel vision
A: have better contact with military community; how much can tolerate
Wright: acceptance; reach further into user; get better measures
A: difficult because have to have controlled environment
Relate graphics performance to operational performance; say to user "can only
get there if you can help us"
A: trying to do more trials, get deeper exposure to users; issues in getting
unclassified databases
User Interest in database visualization—fusions of database
Wright yes it’s big time investment
A: need for geography
Jacobson: database viz nice way to start
Pilots in combat like to use systems they trained on
Make new systems part of training (links to V. Taylor’s comments about military colleges)
A: yes, have to persuade the young one; but old one still has authority
M. Taylor: high and low ranking officers
Bringing them in at all levels helpful politically
A: Do compromise so that user can accept
Da Silva Verissimo: should try to get new features in
Smestad: creating guidelines for non-specific domains is a challenge; can you
explain
A: common solution is to have general set of tools within application; tries
to do much
Smestad: relate to my guidelines
A:
Smestad: graphics were problems, not guidelines
M. Taylor: need generics, but need to make sure not overgeneralizing across applications
Can have guidelines at various levels: hierarchy
Guidelines can be made to be compatible
This is always true, in this situation do this, in that situation, do that
Always refining guidelines
M. Taylor says Smestad’s guidelines are of the general form
Smestad: My guidelines predict Varga’s results (are consistent with)
Failed to disprove
Smestad: Nature of hierarchy, relating to MIL-STD 1472D, guidelines need for hierarchy
V. Taylor: Easier to be generic the further you are from applications
Varga: NATO vs. TTCP: HF vs. operational
M. Taylor: Smestad’s guidelines fit for generic structure of engines
At lowest level that is not true very few things can do on a screen other than
change a pixel
Various models slot in at different levels
M. Taylor: distinction between what we do to develop the the science, improve our understanding of how viz works; and what we do to improve an interface now, these are not opposing goals
V. Taylor: guidelines not absolutes
Varga: results against guidelines
V. Taylor: have constrained set of things you can handle
More talk about getting users interested in new features
Varga: will need more training
Hollands Need for multiple displays, map not only solution
Jacobson: note Wright wright’s attempt to have multiple views, seeing views sequentially
Varga: yes different displays important, different display modes suit different
tasks
Wright: not happy with sonar , needs more iterations
Jacobson her problem is getting the iteration started
V. Taylor: considering the points of the last few days, what do people think of the IST-05 model?
Smestad says yes good general framework, not inconsistent with guidelines
Jacobson: works differently at different levels of hierarchy
people can be part of model
V. Taylor: how do we get out of this organization at the next levels
What happens if we have a peer relationship
M. Taylor: each one appears in the dataspace of the other
V. Taylor: something about hierarchy
M. Taylor: people who are affecting what you are trying to do are engines, whether hierarchical or not, engines can be people or silicon
V. Taylor: one of problems with creating chapter on engines, was this refinement on hierarchy
Smestad: not surprising that the model works; based on cybernetic principles initiated 19th century and refined by Norbert Wiener
V. Taylor: chief sonar operators, his model applied to sonar operator, his engines
include what he views and hears, gets concept, his action is to alert someone
that something is taking place
Understanding and acting fo sonar operator is output device for next level
Hollands scientific model is bad; as a practical model is good
M. Taylor: Six questions evaluator should ask
Iterative nature; use it recursively
Hollands Donald Norman’s control loop