Using VR to visualize mass shooting data in the United States.
Gun violence in the US has been a heated debate for the past few years, especially after the increase in the number of mass shooting incidents. People have been trying to raise public awareness of the issue. Researchers at University of Calgary tackled the subject of gun violence by making mass shooting data more accessible to the public.
People find data intimidating, given its perceived complexity. We’ve all seen some data in the form of an endless and tedious spreadsheet like the one below.
Above is a piece of the dataset of all mass shooting incidents in the US since 1982. All we can see here is plain text and numbers, which at the first glance, seem too scientific and clinical. Now, take a look at this:
The reporters and designers at the Washington Post created this interactive article visualizing the incidents and victims of mass shootings. Instead of plain text and numbers, here we see silhouettes of humans. It feels a lot more emotional than the spreadsheet above, as those victims become more tangible to readers. This way of visualizing each item of the dataset with an individual visual mark, instead of aggregation or representation, is called Unit Visualization. It is intuitive and concrete; when the visual marks are humanoid, it becomes personal and emotional.
“But it still seems so abstract and distant,” you may think. Even though we can see individuals on the website, but they are still only on the screen, flat and still. Unit visualization in installation arts may provide the most emotional interpretation of this data :
In Mazamet Ville Morte, artist Michel Tauriac asked the entire population of Mazamet, France, to lie on the pavement, evoking the total number of French motor vehicle deaths in 1972. By utilizing a similar technique as unit visualization, its emotional and informational engagement surpasses any visualization we see on screens and paper.
Could we bridge the gap between installation art and data visualization? Researchers at University of Calgary might have the answer. They have invented a new implementation of unit visualization with the help of VR technology called Immersive Unit Visualization, as described in “3-D unit visualization created for exploration in an immersive environment”. With help from VR, scientists visualize the same database of mass shooting victims in an engaging 3-D experience.
The VR experience generates one 3D model for each of the victims in the database. And to avoid uncomfortable uncanny valley effects, the models are gray low poly figures. Users can navigate the experience with intuitive pinch to zoom gestures. There are a couple of advantages of this visualization.
- Easy scale transition and navigation
The VR visualization allows users to quickly change the scale and switch perspectives when they view it. Viewers can easily jump between a bird-eye view or a close-up to the person. Also, they can teleport to any other location instantly. None of these can be achieved in art installations.
- Immersive exploration
With VR technology, immersive data visualization can emulate the experience of exploring physical unit visualization or installation art. Viewers can build a strong understanding by leveraging their spatial memory and spatial reasoning just as they would in the physical world. What’s more, it does not require the same large space and investment as installation art does.
- Emotional connection
Anthropomorphism is the process of imposing human characteristics on non-human entities. It makes non-human objects tend to “be associated with emotional and empathetic responses”. The visualization of mass shootings from The Washington Post anthropomorphized the data marks. But researchers in the field of data visualization are divided on whether 2-D anthropomorphic charts have an impact on viewers’ level of empathy.
However, in the immersive data visualization, characters can just be just as life-like in real life. Viewers can ask questions or touch them directly, and they will interact as if the VR characters are real. This means the viewer can build a strong emotional connection with the data, better than the humanoid 2-D silhouette figures.
Immersive Unit Visualization with VR technology has huge potential beyond research. It could be an effective way to prevent mass shootings incidents by raising public awareness. By interacting with the humanoid shapes in a virtually tangible space, users can experience the data and feel emotionally engaged as never before. However, the utility of VR unit visualization is not necessarily limited only to mass shootings. What else do you think it can be applied to? Leave a comment below!
References
Original research paper: Ivanov, Alexander, et al. “A Walk Among the Data.” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, vol. 39, no. 3, 1 May 2019, pp. 19–28, 10.1109/mcg.2019.2898941. Accessed 18 Dec. 2020.
Berkowitz, Bonnie, and Chris Alcantara. “Analysis | More than 50 Years of U.S. Mass Shootings: The Victims, Sites, Killers and Weapons.” Washington Post, 14 Feb. 2018, www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/mass-shootings-in-america/.
Pan, Deanna. “US Mass Shootings, 1982–2019: Data from Mother Jones’ Investigation.” Mother Jones, 18 Feb. 2019, www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/12/mass-shootings-mother-jones-full-data/.
