In June, former INIT Lab PhD student and TIDESS project member Nikita Soni (now a tenure-track assistant professor at UIC) presented our lessons learned in our TIDESS work related to interface design for interactive map-based datasets at a workshop on Map-based Interfaces and Interactions (MAPII) that was held virtually at the Advanced Visual Interfaces (AVI) 2022 conference. The paper is entitled “Touchscreen Interactions for Spatial Data Visualizations on Multi-touch Spherical Displays: Interaction Design Guidelines” and the abstract is below:

Beyond flatscreen tabletop displays, multi-touch spherical displays are gaining increased attention, especially to present interactive geospatial data visualizations to facilitate learning in public spaces (e.g., museums). In general, designing an educational interface that is natural and easy to use for learners of diverse age groups and abilities is critical for designing pedagogically effective applications. We discuss interaction design guidelines established in our prior work on presenting geospatial data visualizations on a multi-touch spherical display for museum learning. Two studies were conducted to investigate how users of diverse age groups (i.e., children and adults) naturally interact and collaborate around spherical displays. This paper discusses a set of 9 interaction design guidelines consolidated from our prior work in one place. These guidelines can be informative in designing more intuitive and pedagogically effective spatial data visualization applications for multi-touch spherical displays in the future.

The final version of the paper and Nikita’s presentation slides will be available soon on our Publications page. We hope that consolidating our lessons learned throughout the project in one place will make our research findings more broadly accessible to researchers and practitioners alike!