Superpowers as Inspiration for Visualization
The desire to enhance human perception, cognition, or experience is not unique to visualization. Fictional narratives in superhero comics, science fiction, and fantasy have long featured characters with extraordinary abilities that allow them to see, reason about, and understand phenomena that are otherwise invisible or incomprehensible.
From Daredevil to Judge Dredd, Neo to Destiny (X-Men), there have been a plethora of fictional characters that have shown range of enhanced visual skills, enhanced vision being the very least of it. Daredevil possess no eyesight but can “see” from the heightened power in all the other senses. Judge Dredd belongs to a dystopian future where his gear serves as an asset that can detect almost anything suspicious from the surroundings. In the movie The Matrix, Neo has the ability to quickly understand and follow the movement of fast-moving objects like bullets. Destiny is an enemy of the X-Men who has psionic powers that allow her to see and predict future events, an ability is referred to as precognition or future perception.
These superpowers act as a source of inspiration to us, to develop technologies that enable the ability to perceive things beyond reasonable human cognition.
Introduction: -
The examples mentioned above are a few from hundreds that act as a source of information which can be helpful to assess and develop tools for better and effective visualization. In this blog, we will look at two frameworks that are inspired by fictional superpowers. The first one will characterize the common mechanisms that form the basis for many fictional abilities, and the second one will find ways in which some visualization tools that can empower the people. The below figure tell us the enhanced abilities that are depicted in fiction.
ENHANCED ABILITIES IN FICTION
Enhanced Human Vision: -
We already rely on a variety of complex and interrelated mechanisms in our visual system (including color vision, depth perception, and stereoscopic vision) to collect information about our environments. The mechanisms mentioned in this section differ considerably across individuals. Characteristics like color perception, visual search speed, and the size of the useful field of view also vary with age or the presence of various genetic conditions. Each of these mechanisms are explained with examples, and their near-equivalent technological tool existing currently.
- Enhanced vision:- Telescopic vision(DC’s Superman), microscopic vision(Marvel’s Hyperion), 360-degree vision (Mad Eye Moody), electromagnetic vision(ability to perceive at different wavelengths)/night vision(Marvel’s Wolverine and Rebellion’s Judge Dredd). Comparing to telescopes and x-ray machines.
- Visual Synthesia:- Emotion vision(DC’s Black Lantern Corps), chemical vision(Marvel’s Eye-Boy), sonar vision(Marvel’s Daredevil). Comparing to thermoscopes and seismoscopes(can “see” the modes of ground vibration).
Enhanced Human Cognition: -
In addition to enhanced vision, numerous fictional characters possess enhanced cognitive abilities that extend their visual perception. These abilities allow them to process and reason about the world in ways that transcend standard human cognition.
- Enhanced attention: - Ability to rapidly attend to important information or visual details like Sherlock Holmes or spider-sense of Spiderman. This can be compared to television news channels, that use zooming and other re-framings of the scene to visually draw viewers’ attention to specific details.
- Enhanced numeracy: - To make rapid, confident, and accurate assessments about extremely large numbers of items. Like Daredevil, Jason Bourne, Star Trek’s Data or Mr. Spock. This can be compared to counting devices like calculators, rulers, weighing scales, mass spectrometers.
- Enhanced recall: - Ability to quickly and accurately recollect past observations from memory, like eidetic memory, like RoboCop, and “peak human” characters like Ozymandias from Watchmen, Terry Sloane (DC’s Golden Age Mister Terrific).
- Enhanced comparison: - Ability to quickly and accurately identify differences or similarities between phenomena. For example Daredevil can distinguish between identical twins from their smell.
- Enhanced prediction: - Ability to visualize future events. They can be glimpses of possible futures. For example, DC’s Clock King or Marvel’s Mad Thinker. In real-world they can be compared to predictive models and forecasting methods.
DIMENSIONS OF EMPOWERMENT IN EPISTEMIC TOOLS
As discussed in the previous section we can combine observations from existing systems and inspirational fictional counterpart of it, to achieve our goals. These goals can be highlighted by the seven dimensions of empowerment, that are, scope, access, spatial relevance, temporal relevance, information richness, degree of control and environment reality. Let’s look at them.
Scope: -
The scope of an epistemic tool is the set of objects or settings on which the tool can operate. The broader the scope of an epistemic tool, the more empowering it is. For example, tourist binoculars mounted in a fixed location let people see visual detail from only one vantage point. Computationally speaking, these visualizations might face the limitation of data and technical tools.
Access: -
The access of an epistemic tool refers to who can use the tool and how easily. It can also be related to the amount of people, that can be benefited from the visualization. For example, visual information provided by a head-mounted AR display is only accessible to the person wearing it, whereas anyone in the vicinity of a large screen or physical installation can access the displayed information. In general, the broader the access to an epistemic tool, the more empowering it is.
Spatial Relevance: -
The spatial relevance of an epistemic tool reflects the distance (real or perceived) between the location where information is most useful to the person, and the location where that information is actually displayed. For example, a paper star map has lower spatial relevance than an AR app that overlays information directly onto the celestial dome. Here also, spatial relevance has a direct correlation to the empowerment it provides.
Temporal Relevance: -
The temporal relevance of a tool is the point in the timeline when the information is delivered to the person, and the moment it would be the most useful for them to have the information. For example, a live stock market display has a higher temporal relevance than the same information published in a daily newspaper. The more ‘timely’ the information is conveyed, the more empowering it is.
Information Richness: -
The information richness of an epistemic tool describes the quantity, variety, and accuracy of the information it is able to convey. This dimension depends upon a variety of factors, like the quality and accuracy of the data, and also the type of the medium used. Richer information tools also empower more.
Degree of Control: -
The degree of control of an epistemic tool refers to how much freedom the person has in activating and controlling the enhanced abilities that it facilitates. Currently, many tools offer quite limited control for manipulation. For example, medical or security-oriented scanners and scientific measurement tools like oscilloscopes. Not everyone is trained to use them.
Environment Reality: -
This dimension of environment reality gives the extent to which its context is real rather than artificial. For example, a VR application that lets people explore real locations (say, a virtual visit to Paris) is more empowering than an application for exploring fictional worlds (like a virtual visit to Atlantis),. For example, a virtual visit to Paris is more ‘real’, is more useful than a trip to ‘Atlantis’.
NEW DIRECTIONS FOR “EMPOWERING” VISUALIZATIONS
Now, let’s revisit the enhanced abilities with our previous framework, that give us ideas and inspirations to empower people with visualizations tools.
Enhanced Vision: -
The new visualization system could help us create tools that empower us with enhanced vision. For example, we can have thermal vision, that uses heat signatures to detect thermal leaks, electrical faults, or fevers. Visualization tools can also be created that enable building vision, that solves the problem of seeing things that are occluded. These tools can widen the scope, and also increase the dimensions of spatial and temporal relevance, as mentioned in the above framework.
Visual Synthesia: -
The ability to integrate real-time data with the visualization tool can empower people with achieving visual synthesia, like “seeing” emotion. The tools facilitating this empowers the most in real-time, while performing the task. In the above figure, it is a meeting. The increase in temporal relevance and the environmental reality can help us in this approach.
Enhanced Attention: -
Tools can be built that filters out the unnecessary noise from the environment and also augments the focus of the subject, giving accelerated vision. For example, in the figure, a car’s windscreen could visualize changes in acceleration of other vehicles, objects, or animals on a road, adding emphasis to draw attention to erratic or unexpected behaviour. This visualization can be improved upon all the dimensions, thereby empowering its users.
Enhanced Numeracy: -
Approaches like counting vision could help individuals make precise and rapid judgements about large or abstract quantities like crowd sizes, numbers of specimens in a collection, or the volume of air in a building. In visualizing instances such as these, high temporal and spatial relevance is required.
Enhanced Prediction: -
Predictive visualization systems can help people by having a vision that sees possible outcomes. For example, the shot vision in the figure, can allow the user to predict the opponents’ next action and thereby help in scoring. Increased spatial and temporal relevance are the key components in this approach.
Enhanced Comparison: -
With advanced numeric abilities, this approach can be used to build tools with enhanced comparison. For example, tools that could empower people by allowing them to align, filter, cluster, and rearrange virtual copies of real-world objects to make their numbers, sizes, volumes, and other characteristics easier to compare. For example, the one in the above figure that was created by Ursus Wehrli.
Enhanced Recall: -
The approaches that help us create visualization tools that facilitate eidetic memory can be made with increase spatial relevance. For example, enhanced recall is achieved with a germ vision system that might use historical occupancy data to help the cleaning staff prioritize key areas, while a patient vision system could provide doctors with summaries of past patient visits during consultations.
CONCLUSION
The frameworks illustrated above give us the idea of getting inspired by fictional characters and make efforts to replicate those powers into visualization tools that can help us in achieving our goals. The methods of creating visualization systems right now need such frameworks to be used. Keeping in mind the effect that they might have over the people, the designers should take into account the responsibility that come with the empowerment. With the development of such tools, the empowerment also has to be fair and equitable to all.
Looking forward, these frameworks and tools will help those without some senses, like Daredevil. These approaches can encourage creative and divergent thinking about the future of the field.
This post is based on the IEEE VIS 2021 paper by Wesley Willett, Bon Adriel Aseniero, Sheelagh Carpendale, Pierre Dragicevic, Yvonne Jansen, Lora Oehlberg, and Petra Isenberg. Perception! Immersion! Empowerment! Superpowers as Inspiration for Visualization.
