Watch & Explore
Incorporating smartwatches with large visualization displays to enhance user interactions
In the realm of data presentations, navigating large interactive displays often feels cumbersome. The marriage of smartwatches with these large displays proposes a simplified reality. No longer shackled by clunky devices or cluttered screens, a presenter could, with a flick of the wrist, transition through visuals, making data interaction more intuitive and less of a chore. This blend of technology aims to streamline the process, making presentations less daunting and more efficient
Large interactive displays, albeit being ubiquitous for data exploration, are want of convenience and efficiency not only for the presenter but also the audience. Leveraging different technologies to provide an exposition causes physical strain on the presenter; menu and tools clutter the interface and obscure prominent information, and interpreting the complex nature of such a design exacerbates it. All of it is compounded by the fact that rectifying them in the middle of a presentation are time consuming tasks. Also, certain situations exist where it is not appropriate to work in close proximity to large displays. This poses the question: is there any way we could make the job easier and convenient for the person giving the presentation?
A group of researchers at the University of Maryland and Technische Universität Dresden had the same question. They invested their time into the researching about the different ways to achieve this goal, and to allow users to develop complex insights more fluidly by leveraging roles of two different devices.
They proposed to utilize personal devices — such as smartwatches — in combination with large displays to support the presenter’s tasks during the exposition. In addition to being lightweight and unobtrusive, smartwatches are easy to carry, and not only provide freedom to the user’s hands when they interact with the large display, but could also provide immediate access to several features that would usually not be found while employing a remote control, and store, manipulate, preview, as well as apply the changes permanently.
There are several pitfalls while working with only large displays to represent visualizations. Consider that your team wants to analyze crime data of a particular region. You would carry out the research, select, refine and organize the data pertaining to specific and relevant subsets or segments and create presentable dashboards. However, while analyzing or giving the presentation, it becomes a bit cumbersome to navigate between different aspects and provide comparisons since the presenter has to perform such tasks manually.
The researchers ultimately created a framework to rectify such issues. A proposed solution is that the large displays would serve as the primary display that provides a multitude of visualizations for different attributes of a dataset. Contrary to this, a smartwatch would allow for a cross-device interaction and will take on the role of a remote control to enhance interaction capabilities, support wide range of exploration tasks and keep track of everything, while allowing the user to interact from a distance.
Doing so would provide access to the data, and allow users to manipulate the visualization and predefine sets (A generalized term for collection of multiple entities). These sets would store a particular aspect, comparison, filter, modification operations, additional details, animations, and can also combine them. The corresponding set would be previewed in the smartwatch first, and then the user can make it interact with the visualization on the large display.
The interactions would be triggered by specific defined gestures. In the context of Crime Data Analysis, the user can select data about burglaries, type of assaults, and the region, create different sets and store it in the smartwatch. Then, while presenting or analyzing an overview of the crimes, the user can select the set, double tap to make it interact with the visualization, and then swipe it to display onto the large screen.
When the interaction is successful, the watch would confirm it with a vibration. By rotating the bezel of the watch back and forth, the user can switch between different sets, which can be used to discover important data. Consequently, the user can select a particular region and the smartwatch would display list of available relevant data and the user can switch between different aspects. Conversely, the user can also create specific interactions on the large display, and store them as sets into the smartwatch.
The researchers acknowledge that an in-depth study of such multi-device visual exploration would broaden this to a larger group of tasks and believe that such an environment is strongly beneficial for visual analysis tasks and beyond.
In conclusion, the collaborative research heralds a pioneering approach to simplify data exploration and presentation. The large display provides a multi-view interface, whereas the smartwatch augments and mediates the functionalities by serving as a personalized tool- box. This innovation marks a significant step towards more seamless and convenient multi-device exploration, offering a glimpse into the future of interactive data handling and presentation techniques.
References
- Tom Horak, Sriram Karthik Badam, Niklas Elmqvist, and Raimund Dachselt. 2018. When David Meets Goliath: Combining Smartwatches with a Large Vertical Display for Visual Data Exploration. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 19, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173593
