Start of the TRR 248: Foundations of Perspicuous Software Systems

We are happy to announce that the Collaborative Research Centre/Transregio 248 “Foundations of Perspicuous Software Systems” was launched at the beginning of the year. In this project, our lab is cooperating with the Saarland University, the Max Planck Institute for Informatics, and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems.

The Research Centre focuses on cyber-phyiscal systems of the future, enabling them to explain their functionality and behaviour (so-called Perspicuous Systems).

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Successful Participation at the IEEE VIS 2018 in Berlin

For the second time in its history, the IEEE VIS conference took place in Europe: from October 21 to 26, researchers, students, and practitioners from all over the world came together in Berlin to present and discuss the latest developments in visualization research. From the Interactive Media Lab, Ricardo Langner, Tom Horak, and Raimund Dachselt participated and presented our own work. On Wednesday, Ricardo gave a well-received talk on our paper evaluating Multiple Coordinated Views at Large Displays for Multiple Users. Later on Wednesday, Tom and Ricardo showed two posters during the poster session: Comparing Rendering Performance of Common Web Technologies for Large Graphs and Towards Visual Data Exploration at Wall-Sized Displays by Combining Physical Navigation with Spatially-Aware Devices, respectively.

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UIST 2018 in Berlin, Germany

Pushables: A DIY Approach for Fabricating Customizable And Self-Contained Tactile Membrane Dome Switches

From October 14 to October 17, the 31st ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (short UIST 2018) took place at the center of Berlin, near the “Fernsehturm Berlin”. The doctoral symposium and welcome reception with great research demostratators happend at Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam on Sunday. UIST brings together people from diverse areas including graphical & web interfaces, tangible & ubiquitous computing, virtual & augmented reality, novel devices, and CSCW.

This year, Konstantin Klamka presented our DIY fabrication approach, called Pushables, that allow to easily produce thin, bendable and highly customizable membrane dome switches.

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PhD Defense of Ulrich von Zadow

On May 14, 2018 Ulrich von Zadow successfully defended his dissertation as part of the Interactive Media Lab Dresden. Congratulations from all of us, Ulrich!

The topic of his dissertation was “Personalized Interaction with High-Resolution Wall Displays” and addresses the localization of multiple users in front of wall-sized displays, the according adaptation of user interfaces, and the analysis of user behavior. We are happy that Olivier Chapuis from the university Paris-Sud, France agreed to act as external reviewer of his thesis. After Ulrich’s great talk and successful discussion of the work, the event was celebrated at a restaurant in Dresden’s city center. A small photo gallery provides a view into this special day.

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PhD Defense of Ulrike Kister

Ulrike Kister defended her dissertation on May 8, 2018 as another very successful PhD student of the Interactive Media Lab Dresden. Her topic Interactive Visualization Lenses addresses the support of data exploration for multiple users at wall-sized displays with the help of configurable analysis tools. She combines aspects of the two research fields human-computer interaction and information visualization. We are very happy that Petra Isenberg from AVIZ research group (Inria) agreed to act as external reviewer for this thesis. After her great defense, the entire Interactive Media Lab and guests celebrated at a nice restaurant near the Loschwitz Bridge. Some impressions of the great day can be found in our small photo gallery.

We congratulate Ulrike Kister on her great dissertation and wish her all the best for her future endeavors.

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Successful participation at CHI 2018

The ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (short CHI) took place in Montréal, QC, Canada from April 21 to 26. Five of us represented the Interactive Media Lab Dresden by presenting nine contributions in total (see news). One highlight certainly was the presentation of our full paper When David Meets Goliath: Combining Smartwatches with a Large Vertical Display for Visual Data Exploration. The paper is the result of a cooperation of Tom Horak and Raimund Dachselt with Karthik Badam and Niklas Elmqvist from the University of Maryland and received a Honorable Mention Award at ACM CHI 2018.
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Best Paper Award for Our Perspective Paper at CHIIR 2018

Wolfgang presented our perspective paper “Here and Now: Reality-Based Information Retrieval” at ACM CHIIR 2018 in New Brunswick, NJ, USA. We are very happy that our concepts and ideas for possible future information retrieval systems in mixed reality environments proved very popular. Our paper was awarded the Best Paper Award at the conference. Congratulations to the authors Wolfgang Büschel, Annett Mitschick and Raimund Dachselt! We also added some photos to our gallery.

Nine Contributions & Honorable Mention Award at ACM CHI 2018

At this year’s ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), our group presents nine accepted contributions – 1 full paper, 2 Late Breaking Work articles, 2 demonstrations, 1 co-organized workshop and 3 workshop contributions. The ACM CHI is the biggest and most important conference in the field of human-computer interaction and will take place in Montreal, Canada from April 21 to 26, 2018. We are particularly pleased about the honorable mention award (top 5%) for our full paper When David Meets Goliath: Combining Smartwatches with a Large Vertical Display for Visual Data Exploration. The paper is the result of a cooperation from Tom Horak and Raimund Dachselt with Karthik Badam and Niklas Elmqvist from the University of Maryland. The focus of the work is the combination of smartwatches and large interactive displays for data analysis. We will also present the corresponding prototype of this work in an accompanying CHI Interactivity demonstration.
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Doctorate Martin Spindler

With Martin Spindler another PhD student of the Interactive Media Lab Dresden very successfully defended his dissertation on February 12, 2018. Congratulations from all of us on this impressive achievement, Martin! The topic of the dissertation was “Tangible Displays”, which comprises, among others, six (!) full papers and one journal article. We were able to win Prof. Dr. Jürgen Steimle of Saarland University as external supervisor. As the PhD was started in Magdeburg, some ceremonial traditions from Magdeburg enriched the festivity in Dresden. Afterwards, Martins success was celebrated in a restaurant at the campus of Technische Universität Dresden. The doctorate supervisor, Raimund Dachselt, provides some impressions of this special day in a photo gallery.

Again, we congratulate Martin on his dissertation and wish him all the best for the next chapter in his life.

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