I. Overview
This thesis investigates yet unexplored potentials of mobile devices for interacting with information visualizations (InfoVis). The work applied an exploratory approach and developed a range of techniques and studies that contribute to the understanding of how mobile devices can be used not only for typical personal visualization but also in more professional settings as part of novel and beyond-the-desktop InfoVis environments.
The work is based on four realized projects that can be connected by the following research objectives:
- Facilitating data visualization beyond the casual exploration of personal data;
- Integrating mobile devices in multi-device settings for InfoVis; and
- Exploiting the mobility and spatiality of mobile devices for InfoVis
In order to address these objective, the research mainly concentrated on interactions with multivariate data represented in multiple coordinated views (MCV). It also considered two different device settings: (Mobile devices on a table) One part of the research investigated scenarios where one or more people sit at a regular table and analyze data in MCV that are distributed across several mobile devices. (Mobile devices in 3D space)The other part focused on scenarios in which a wall-sized display shows large-scale MCV and mobile devices enable interactions with the visualizations from varying positions and distances. The two settings allowed to study different purposes and roles of mobile devices during data exploration. Finally, the work examined different spatial device interactions. This included placing and organizing multiple mobile devices in meaningful spatial arrangements and also pointing interaction that combines touch and spatial device input.
II. The Thesis Document
The dissertation is publicly available via Qucosa.
@phdthesis{Langner-2025-ExploringMobileDev,
author = {Ricardo Langner},
title = {Exploring Mobile Device Interactions for Information Visualization},
year = {2025},
month = {1},
numpages = {287},
url = {https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa2-949500},
publisher = {Qucosa},
address = {Dresden},
keywords = {Human-Computer Interaction, Information Visualization, Mobile Devices, Visual Data Analysis, Multiple Coordinated Views}
}List of additional material
III. Research Projects
VisTiles: Combination & Spatial Arrangement of Mobile Devices
With VisTiles, the work contributed a conceptual framework that uses a set of mobile devices to distribute and coordinate several visualization views for the exploration of multivariate data. In contrast to desktop-based interfaces for InfoVis, mobile devices offer the potential to provide a dynamic and user-defined interface supporting co-located collaborative data exploration with different individual workflows.
Further Information
See the separate project website for further photos and videos of the VisTiles project.
@inproceedings{fixme,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Tom Horak and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Demonstrating VisTiles: Visual Data Exploration Using Mobile Devices},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2018 International Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces},
series = {AVI '18},
year = {2018},
month = {5},
isbn = {978-1-4503-5616-9},
location = {Castiglione della Pescaia, Grosseto, Italy},
pages = {69:1--69:3},
numpages = {3},
doi = {10.1145/3206505.3206583},
url = {http://doi.org/10.1145/3206505.3206583},
acmid = {3206583},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA}
}List of additional material
@article{Langner:2018aa,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Tom Horak and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {VisTiles: Coordinating and Combining Co-located Mobile Devices for Visual Data Exploration},
journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
volume = {24},
issue = {1},
year = {2018},
month = {1},
location = {Phoenix, Arizona USA},
pages = {626--636},
numpages = {11},
doi = {10.1109/TVCG.2017.2744019},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2017.2744019},
publisher = {IEEE},
keywords = {collaboration, data visualization, mobile communication, prototypes, smart phones, visualization, mobile devices, coordinated \& multiple views, cross-device interaction, multi-display environment}
}List of additional material
, Video
@inproceedings{fixme,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Tom Horak and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Towards Combining Mobile Devices for Visual Data Exploration},
booktitle = {Poster Program of the 2016 IEEE Conference on Information Visualization (InfoVis)},
year = {2016},
month = {10},
location = {Baltimore, MD, USA},
numpages = {2}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{fixme,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Tom Horak and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Information Visualizations with Mobile Devices: Three Promising Aspects},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Data Exploration for Interactive Surfaces (DEXIS 2015)},
year = {2015},
month = {11},
location = {Funchal/Madeira, Portugal},
pages = {20--23},
numpages = {4},
keywords = {Information visualization; Mobile devices; Multi-touch interaction; Spatial input; Spatial arrangement}
}List of additional material
Marvis: Mobile Devices and Augmented Reality
With Marvis, the work contributed a conceptual framework that combines mobile devices and head-mounted Augmented Reality (AR) for visual data analysis. The core idea was to demonstrate how the limited screen space of mobile devices can be extended by AR—to present additional 2D and 3D information around, above, and between mobile devices.
Further Information
See the separate project website for further photos and videos of the Marvis project.
@inproceedings{langner:2021:marvis,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Marc Satkowski and Wolfgang B\"{u}schel and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {MARVIS: Combining Mobile Devices and Augmented Reality for Visual Data Analysis},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2021 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
year = {2021},
month = {5},
isbn = {978-1-4503-8096-6/21/05},
location = {Yokohama, Japan},
numpages = {17},
doi = {10.1145/3411764.3445593},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
keywords = {data visualization, mobile devices, head-mounted augmented reality, cross-device interaction, data analysis, mobile data visualization, augmented displays, immersive analytics}
}List of additional material
FlowTransfer: Content Sharing Between Phones and a Large Display
With FlowTransfer, the work proposed a collection of five interaction techniques that explore different aspects of cross-device data transfer while assuming that the mobile phone’s position and orientation are known. The techniques considered multi-item transfer, interactions from different positions and distances in front of the large display wall, and also layout support: Both precise and casual layouts could be generated while transferring to the large display, and layouts could be copied from the large display to the mobile device.
Further Information
See the separate project website for further photos and videos of the FlowTransfer project.
@inbook{fixme,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Ulrich von Zadow and Tom Horak and Annett Mitschick and Raimund Dachselt},
editor = {Craig Anslow and Pedro Campos and Joaquim Jorge},
title = {Content Sharing Between Spatially-Aware Mobile Phones and Large Vertical Displays Supporting Collaborative Work},
booktitle = {Collaboration Meets Interactive Spaces},
year = {2016},
month = {12},
isbn = {978-3-319-45852-6},
pages = {75--96},
numpages = {22},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-319-45853-3_5},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45853-3_5},
publisher = {Springer International Publishing}
}List of additional material
, Video
@article{fixme,
author = {Wolfgang B\"{u}schel and Ricardo Langner and Ulrich von Zadow and Tom Horak and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Towards Cross-Surface Content Sharing Between Mobile Devices and Large Displays in the Wild},
booktitle = {CHI 2016 Workshop on Interacting with Multi-Device Ecologies "'in the Wild"'},
year = {2016},
month = {5},
location = {San Jose, CA, USA},
numpages = {5}
}List of additional material
Divico: Touch and Pointing Interaction for Multiple Coordinated Views
With Divico, the work investigated direct touch and pointing interaction for MCV displayed on a wall-sized display. The role of mobile devices was to enable interaction with visualizations from varying distances. A qualitative user study then aimed to investigate how pairs of users behave during data analysis, how they move in the physical space in front of the large display, how they work together, and when and for which actions they use the mobile device.
Further Information
See the separate project website for further photos and videos of the Divico project.
@article{fixme,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Ulrike Kister and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Multiple Coordinated Views at Large Displays for Multiple Users: Empirical Findings on User Behavior, Movements, and Distances},
journal = {IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics},
volume = {25},
issue = {1},
year = {2019},
month = {1},
location = {Berlin, Germany},
pages = {608--618},
numpages = {11},
doi = {10.1109/TVCG.2018.2865235},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/TVCG.2018.2865235},
publisher = {IEEE},
keywords = {multiple coordinated views, wall-sized displays, mobile devices, distant interaction, physical navigation, user behavior, user movements, multi-user, collaborative data analysis}
}
@article{langner2018combining,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Ulrike Kister and Marc Satkowski and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Combining Interactive Large Displays and Smartphones to Enable Data Analysis from Varying Distances},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the AVI 2018 Workshop on Multimodal Interaction for Data Visualization},
series = {MultimodalVis '18},
year = {2018},
month = {5},
location = {Castiglione della Pescaia, Grosseto, Italy},
numpages = {4}
}List of additional material
IV. Further Publications
Besides the project publications listed above, Ricardo Langner also co-authored the following publications during his doctoral studies:
@inproceedings{pmc-vis-2023,
author = {Max Korn and Juli\'{a}n M\'{e}ndez and Sascha Kl\"{u}ppelholz and Ricardo Langner and Christel Baier and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {PMC-VIS: An Interactive Visualization Tool for Probabilistic Model Checking},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods},
series = {Lecture Notes in Computer Science},
year = {2023},
month = {11},
location = {Eindhoven Netherlands},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-031-47115-5_20},
publisher = {Springer}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{krug2023facets,
author = {Katja Krug and Ricardo Langner and Konstantin Klamka},
title = {Discussing Facets of Hybrid User Interfaces for the Medical Domain},
booktitle = {Proceedings of 2023 IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality Adjunct (ISMAR-Adjunct)},
series = {ISMAR '23},
year = {2023},
month = {10},
location = {Sydney},
doi = {10.1109/ISMAR-Adjunct60411.2023.00059},
publisher = {IEEE}
}List of additional material
@article{MAKLBD-CGF-2023,
author = {Juli\'{a}n M\'{e}ndez and Christian Alrabbaa and Patrick Koopmann and Ricardo Langner and Franz Baader and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Evonne: A Visual Tool for Explaining Reasoning with OWL Ontologies and Supporting Interactive Debugging},
journal = {Computer Graphics Forum},
year = {2023},
month = {3},
location = {Leipzig, Germany},
doi = {10.1111/cgf.14730},
publisher = {John Wiley \& Sons, Ltd}
}List of additional material
@inbook{langner2021,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Lonni Besançon and Christopher Collins and Tim Dwyer and Petra Isenberg and Tobias Isenberg and Bongshin Lee and Charles Perin and Christian Tominski},
editor = {Bongshin Lee and Raimund Dachselt and Petra Isenberg and Eun Kyoung Choe},
title = {An Introduction to Mobile Data Visualization},
booktitle = {Mobile Data Visualization},
year = {2021},
pages = {1--32},
doi = {10.1201/9781003090823-1},
publisher = {Chapman and Hall/CRC}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{Horak2020MultivariateNetworksMobile,
author = {Tom Horak and Ricardo Langner and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Towards Visualizing and Exploring Multivariate Networks on Mobile Devices},
booktitle = {Companion Proceedings of the 2020 Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces},
series = {ISS '20 Companion},
year = {2020},
month = {11},
location = {Virtual Event, Portugal},
pages = {5--8},
doi = {10.1145/3380867.3426201},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{Flemisch2020,
author = {Tamara Flemisch and Ricardo Langner and Christian Alrabbaa and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Towards Designing a Tool For Understanding Proofs in Ontologies through Combined Node-Link Diagrams},
booktitle = {5th International Workshop on Visualization and Interaction for Ontologies and Linked Data},
year = {2020},
month = {11},
location = {Online Conference},
numpages = {13}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{Fuhrmann2020,
author = {Robert Fuhrmann and Anke Lehmann and Annett Mitschick and Ricardo Langner and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {CoFind: A Browser Plugin for Investigating Co-located Collaborative Web Search},
booktitle = {Mensch und Computer 2020 - Tagungsband},
year = {2020},
month = {9},
pages = {425–429},
numpages = {5},
doi = {10.1145/3404983.3410012},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York},
keywords = {collaborative information seeking, awareness, web search}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{fixme,
author = {Ricardo Langner and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Towards Visual Data Exploration at Wall-Sized Displays by Combining Physical Navigation with Spatially-Aware Devices},
booktitle = {Poster Program of the 2018 IEEE VIS Conference},
year = {2018},
month = {10},
location = {Berlin, Germany},
numpages = {2}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{Lee2018aa,
author = {Bongshin Lee and Matthew Brehmer and Petra Isenberg and Eun Kyoung Choe and Ricardo Langner and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Data Visualization on Mobile Devices},
booktitle = {Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems},
series = {CHI EA '18},
year = {2018},
month = {4},
isbn = {978-1-4503-5621-3},
location = {Montreal, QC, Canada},
pages = {W07:1--W07:8},
numpages = {8},
doi = {10.1145/3170427.3170631},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3170427.3170631},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
keywords = {Data Visualization, Interaction, Mobile Devices, Mobile Visualization, Visualization Design}
}List of additional material
, Website
@inproceedings{Bueschel2017_3DInfoVis,
author = {Wolfgang B\"{u}schel and Patrick Reipschl\"{a}ger and Ricardo Langner and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Investigating the Use of Spatial Interaction for 3D Data Visualization on Mobile Devices},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2017 ACM International Conference on Interactive Surfaces and Spaces},
series = {ISS '17},
year = {2017},
month = {10},
isbn = {978-1-4503-4691-7},
location = {Brighton, United Kingdom},
pages = {62--71},
numpages = {10},
doi = {10.1145/3132272.3134125},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3132272.3134125},
acmid = {3134125},
publisher = {ACM},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
keywords = {3D Data Visualization, Immersive Visualization, Mobile Devices, Spatial Input, Tangible Displays}
}List of additional material
@inproceedings{fixme,
author = {Tom Horak and Ulrike Kister and Konstantin Klamka and Ricardo Langner and Raimund Dachselt},
title = {Logging in Visualizations: Challenges of Interaction Techniques Beyond Mouse and Keyboard},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the IEEE VIS 2016 Workshop on Logging Interactive Visualizations \& Visualizing Interaction Logs (LIVVIL)},
year = {2016},
month = {10},
location = {Baltimore, MD, USA},
numpages = {2}
}List of additional material
V. Contributing Student Theses
The following student theses contributed partly to the previously listed co-authored publications:
Support and Implications of Group Awareness for Collaborative Web Search(Master Thesis)
Robert Fuhrmann
Tangible Views for Information Visualization with Vertical Context Displays(Master Thesis)
Lucas Recknagel
Multi-touch Interaction Concepts for Star Plots(Master Thesis)
Christin Engel
Integration of the Visualization Techniques Parallel Coordinate Plots and Stream Graphs into VisTiles(Bachelor Thesis)
Nils Henning
Using Smartphones for Remote Control of Information Visualizations on Large Displays(research)
Marc Satkowski
Innovative Concepts for the Connection and Interaction of/with Large Interactive Displays and Mobile Devices(Diplom Thesis)
Anton Augsburg
Combination of Mobile Devices: Novel Concepts for Interactive Information Visualizations(Master Thesis)
Tom Horak
Interactive Data Comparison Using a Display Wall and Mobile Devices(Project Thesis)
Matthias Kalms
Sifteo-Cube meets Surface: Development of Novel Interactions for the Combination of Interactive Tangibles and Tabletops(Project Thesis)
Anton Augsburg
A full list of all student theses co-supervised by Ricardo Langner (before, during, and after his doctoral studies) can be found on this page.