Browsing by Author "Costa Sousa, Mário"
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Item Open Access 3D Geological Modeling from Concept Sketches and Annotations(2017) Mendonça Amorim, Ronan; Costa Sousa, Mário; Famil Samavati, Faramarz; Eaton, David W. S.; Sharlin, Ehud; Katz, Larry; Mould, DavidDuring the early stages of any design project, specialists explore and refine ideas collaboratively by constructing conceptual models through hand-drawn sketches and renderings. The resulting models are then used to make decisions before moving to the detailed design phase of development. Sketch-Based Interfaces and Modeling (SBIM) is an area of research devoted to the development of computational tools to aid in this prototyping process. The main goal of SBIM is to construct models directly from hand-drawn sketches, leveraging the sketching skills of experts in different domains such as art, science, and engineering. In this thesis, I investigate the theory and practice of concept sketching applied to the problem of constructing conceptual models of geological structures describing subsurface environments. Geological models describe the disposition, geometry, and types of rocks in the subsurface, and are critical to a wide range of applications, such as oil/gas exploration. Current subsurface modeling workflows lack more interpretive and interactive modeling tools, which could enable experts to rapidly construct a variety of digital conceptual geological models directly from their interpretation sketches. In this thesis, I am addressing fundamental research in SBIM motivated by the challenges of constructing conceptual geological models from 2D hand-drawn sketches. This thesis explores the use of SBIM to complement existing geological modeling tools with more interpretive and interactive methods, with the goal of expediting the construction of concept geological structures described at the early stages of subsurface modeling. To this end, two new SBIM methods are proposed: (1) Geo-Editor aims to enable experts to more easily and rapidly edit/augment existing geological surfaces, using sketches directly in 3D with/without geological data. (2) Geo-Sketcher complements the previous approach by allowing the rapid construction of conceptual geological models from a blank-screen environment using rule-based SBIM. It leverages the standard language provided by geological and topographic maps to provide experts with a familiar notation for sketching. The results and feedback from domain experts demonstrate that the proposed methods can significantly reduce the time necessary to create or edit 3D geological models.Item Open Access 3d sketching and collaborative design with napkin sketch(2011) Xin, Min; Sharlin, Ehud; Costa Sousa, MárioItem Open Access Balanced Multiresolution in Multilevel Focus+Context Visualization(2018-08-22) Hasan, Mahmudul; Samavati, Faramarz; Costa Sousa, Mário; Mudur, Sudhir Pandurang; Gavrilova, Marina L.; Jacob, Christian J.; Katz, LarryGiven a set of symmetric/antisymmetric filter vectors containing only regular multiresolution filters, the method we present in this thesis can establish a balanced multiresolution (BMR) scheme for images, allowing their balanced decomposition and subsequent perfect reconstruction without the use of any extraordinary boundary filters. We define balanced multiresolution such that it allows balanced decomposition i.e. decomposition of a high-resolution image into a low-resolution image and corresponding details of equal size. Several applications of such a decomposition result in a balanced wavelet transform (BWT) that makes on-demand reconstruction of regions of interest (ROIs) efficient in both computational load and implementation aspects. We find such decomposition and perfect reconstruction based on an appropriate combination of symmetric/antisymmetric extensions near the image and detail boundaries. In our method, exploiting such extensions correlates to performing sample (pixel/voxel) split operations. We demonstrate our general approach for some commonly used symmetric/antisymmetric multiresolution filters. We also show the application of such a balanced multiresolution scheme in constructing an interactive multilevel focus+context visualization framework for the navigation and exploration of large-scale 2D and 3D images. Typically, the given filters are floating-point values, so our BWTs reversibly map integers to floating-point i.e. real values. We extend our balanced multiresolution framework further to construct reversible integer-to-integer BWTs from a given symmetric/antisymmetric decomposition filter vector of width less or equal to four. In our approach, we adjust the linear combination of fine samples suggested by the given decomposition vector using optimal sample split operations in combination with a rounding operation. Such adjustments translate an affine integer combination of fine samples to obtain an integer coarse sample, which closely approximates the floating-point coarse sample suggested by the given decomposition filter vector. The associated translation vectors give us the detail samples. Furthermore, when necessary, we construct every other detail sample differently in order to ensure local perfect reconstruction. Compared to their integer-to-real counterparts, the resulting reversible integer-to-integer BWTs occupy less memory, offer better compressibility, and do not require sample quantization for rendering purposes.Item Open Access Constraining Wavelets for Multiresolution(2006) Olsen, Luke Jonathan; Samavati, Faramarz F.; Costa Sousa, MárioItem Open Access Curve synthesis by example(2006) Brunn, Meru; Costa Sousa, Mário; Samavati, Faramarz F.Item Open Access Designing video games with social, physical, and authorship gameplay(2012) Lapides, Paul; Sharlin, Ehud; Costa Sousa, MárioItem Open Access Developing a Usable API for Multi-Surface Systems(2013-05-23) Burns, Christopher; Maurer, Frank; Costa Sousa, MárioA multi-surface system brings together a variety of different devices – such as a tabletop, tablet, mobile phone and wall display – into a single cohesive system. This integration allows users to take advantage of the unique capabilities of each device in ways that would not be possible using those devices separately. But creating usable interactions for moving content and control between all these devices has proven a difficult problem. Spatially augmented gestures, which are gestures which incorporate the spatial layout of the room as well as the people and devices in it, might provide a solution to this problem. Building such gestures into a multi-surface systems is difficult and tedious to develop. It represents too large an investment of time and effort for developers to bear. To decrease the cost of developing such systems, we have created an API – called MSE-API – that allows developers to quickly and efficiently add gestural interactions to multi-surface applications. In developing such an API we focused especially on making it usable for developers. Specifically we insured the API was learnable and discoverable for inexperienced developers but still an efficient tool for more experienced developers. This thesis presents the requirements and structure of an API for developing multi-surface systems with spatially augmented gestures. The result of two case studies, in which the API was used to develop real world multi-surface applications, are also presented.Item Open Access Examining User Experience in Multi-Display Environments(2013-05-01) Seyed, Alemayehu; Maurer, Frank; Costa Sousa, MárioWith a large number of interactive displays and devices available for users today, multi-display environments are becoming both increasingly common and complex. This complexity also has an effect on a fundamental interaction that users frequently perform in multi-display environments – transferring content. The devices and displays in a multi-display environment – such as digital tabletops, tablets, and high resolution wall displays – now allow users to transfer content in a variety of different combinations. A review of existing research literature revealed that many of the interactions designed for transferring content in multi-display environments were created by system designers and were not necessarily interactions that users would find usable in real-world multi-display environments. From a user experience perspective, these interactions in multi-display environments require a focus on users, whose real-world experiences and perceptions play a significant role in the interactions themselves. This thesis presents research that identifies better interaction design for multi-display environments. This is accomplished by performing an elicitation study to determine the interactions that users are both comfortable with and prefer for transferring content in a multi-display environment. The result is a set of interaction metaphors and guidelines for user experience professionals to draw upon when creating new gestures and interactions for transferring content in multi-display environments.Item Open Access Exploring Immersive Virtual Environments for Well Placement Optimization in Reservoir Models(2017) Cabral Ramos Mota, Roberta; Costa Sousa, Mário; Sharlin, Ehud; Alim, Usman; Parlac, VeraImmersive virtual environments have been considered promising mediums to attend specific demands from the oil and gas industry. In this thesis, we explore immersive technologies’ benefits for the execution of tasks associated with well placement optimization. We present a) an analytical method to perform static connectivity analysis as a proxy for flow simulation, b) an application to support well optimization using our method, and c) an exploration of our application in three immersive environments – a CAVE with a tracked gamepad; a HMD with a tracked gamepad; and a HMD with a leap motion controller – in the search for visualization and interaction techniques that facilitate well placement studies. Based on primary study conducted with reservoir engineers, we provide an examination of the usefulness of our application. We also discuss our findings considering engineers’ preferences as well as the suitability of the different immersive environments for designing and assessing well placement scenarios.Item Open Access Exploring novel interfaces for 3d visualization of reservoir simulation post-processing data(2011) Sultanum, Nicole Barbosa; Costa Sousa, Mário; Sharlin, EhudItem Open Access Exploring Tabletops as an Interaction Medium in the Context of Reservoir Engineering(2012-10-03) Somanath, Sowmya; Costa Sousa, Mário; Sharlin, EhudDigital tabletops are powerful interaction mediums. As a virtual medium their computational capabilities allow the user to digitally explore, transform and embellish the input content to gain further insights about the pertinent information. On the other hand, as a physical medium, their form factor inherently supports collaboration and presents opportunities to place other physical objects atop to assist and enhance the exploration experience. In this thesis, we propose the use of tabletops as an interaction medium to explore reservoir post-processing flow simulation models using virtual content - visualizations and a physical agent - Spidey: a tabletop robotic assistant. We discuss results that emerged from evaluating each of the prototypes, presenting the potential of each of these concepts and their applicability to the domain of reservoir engineering. With the Spidey testbed we explored the notion of proxemics between a user and a robotic tabletop assistant and performed a user study in which participants interacted with Spidey. Thus in the results, we also discuss the proxemics results reflecting on the interaction between people and tabletop robots.Item Open Access Hairs, Textures, and Shades: Improving the Realism of Plant Models Generated with L-Systems(2005-08) Fuhrer, Martin; Prusinkiewicz, Przemyslaw; Wyvill, Brian; Costa Sousa, Mário; Hushlak, GeraldItem Open Access Hybrid sketch-based and procedural modeling of plants(2007) Anastacio, Fabricio Cesar Ferreira; Costa Sousa, Mário; Prusinkiewicz, PrzemyslawItem Open Access Interactive volume manipulation(2008) Chen, Hung-Li Jason; Samavati, Faramarz F.; Costa Sousa, MárioItem Open Access Level set volume segmentation using programmable graphics hardware(2011) Roberts, Mike; Costa Sousa, MárioItem Open Access 'Making' within Material, Cultural, and Emotional Constraints(2017) Somanath, Sowmya; Sharlin, Ehud; Costa Sousa, Mário; Oehlberg, Lora; Hughes, Janette; Parlac, Vera; Meruvia Pastor, OscarThe Maker Movement aims to democratize technological practices and promises many benefits for people including improved technical literacy, a means for self-expression and agency, and an opportunity to become more than consumers of technology. As part of the Maker Movement, people build hobbyist and utilitarian projects by themselves using programmable electronics (e.g., microcontroller, sensors, actuators) and software tools. While the Maker Movement is gaining momentum globally, some people are left out. Constraints such as material limitations, educational culture restrictions, and emotional or behavioral difficulties can often limit people from taking part in the Maker Movement. We refer to the systematic investigation of how diverse people respond to making-centered activities within constraints as an exploration of making within constraints. In this dissertation, we (1) study how people respond to creating physical objects by themselves within constraints and, (2) investigate how to design technology that can help makers within constraints. We conducted an observational study in an impoverished school in India and identified the students' challenges and their strategies for making within material and educational culture constraints. We conducted a second study with at-promise youth in Canada and identified a set of lessons learned to engage youth within emotional and behavioral constraints in making-centered activities. Leveraging our observations, we proposed Augmented Reality (AR)-mediated prototyping as a way to address material constraints. AR-mediated prototyping can help makers to build, program, interact with and iterate on physical computing projects that combine both real-world and stand-in virtual electronic components. We designed, implemented, and evaluated a technology probe, Polymorphic Cube (PMC), as an instance of our vision. Our results show that PMC helped participants prototype despite missing I/O electronic components, and highlighted how AR-mediated prototyping extends to exploring project ideas, tinkering with implementation, and making with others. Informed by our empirical and design explorations, we suggest a set of characteristics of constraints and implications for designing future technologies for makers within constraints. In the long-term, we hope that this research will inspire interaction designers to develop new tools that can help resolve constraints for making.Item Open Access Mediating Experiential Learning in Interactive Immersive Environments(2018-01-22) Mostafa, Ahmed; Sharlin, Ehud; Costa Sousa, Mário; Chan, Sonny; Takashima, Kazuki; Boulanger, Pierre; El-Sheimy, NaserSimulation and immersive environments are gaining popularity in various contexts. Arguably, such interactive systems have the potential to benefit many users in a variety of education and training scenarios. However, some of these systems especially with the lack of skilled instructors are still faced by challenges of operational complexity, the incorporation of different technologies and features, and the limited availability of performance measures and feedback. Therefore, the design of these systems would benefit from integrating experiential aspects and essential educational aids. For example, users of such learning systems, especially the novice ones, can be better supported by a smoother learning curve, detailed guidance features, the availability of feedback and performance reporting, and the integration of engaging & reflective capabilities. In essence, we recognize a need to re-explore learning aids and how they impact design, usage, and overall learning experience in interactive immersive environments. The goal of this dissertation is to mediate experiential learning in interactive immersive environments. This includes exploring existing and novel learning aids that would facilitate learning with improved engagement and immersion, enrich learners with insightful reflections, better support novice users’ learning and training needs, and ultimately enhance the overall experience. To achieve this goal, we utilized existing learning models and simulation-based training approaches and proposed a framework of learning aids to mediate learning in interactive immersive environments. Working closely with domain expert collaborators, we designed, implemented and evaluated four new interactive immersive prototypes in an attempt to validate the practicality of our aids. The first prototype, NeuroSimVR, is a stereoscopic visualization augmented with educational aids to support how medical users learn about a common back surgery procedure. The second prototype, ReflectiveSpineVR, is an immersive virtual reality surgical simulation with innovative interaction history capabilities that aim to empower users’ memories and enable deliberate repetitive practice as needed. The third prototype, JackVR, is an interactive immersive training system, utilizing novel gamification elements, and aims to support oil-and-gas experts in the process of landing oil rigs. Our fourth prototype, RoboTeacher, involves a humanoid robot instructor for teaching people industrial assembly tasks. In our prototypes, we presented novel learning aids, visualization, and interaction techniques that are new to many of the current immersive learning tools. We conclude this dissertation with lessons learned and guidelines for designing with learning aids in future research directions that target interactive experiential environments.Item Open Access Multidimensional Projection Visualization: Control-points Selection and Inverse Projection Exploration(2016) Portes dos Santos Amorim, Elisa; Costa Sousa, Mário; Samavati, Faramarz; Gavrilova, Marina; Jacob, Christian J.; Rios, Cristian; Esperanca, ClaudioThe task of interpreting multidimensional data is as important as it is challenging. The importance comes from the fact that virtually every data worth analyzing is multidimensional, while the challenge comes from the very nature of these data sets, as the multiple features describing each instance can quickly overwhelm our visual perception system, thus making it difficult to observe meaningful information. Visualization techniques play an essential role in simplifying this task, by preprocessing the data to extract critical features and displaying them effectively, by using visual metaphors that can be easily understood. Multidimensional Projection (MP) is one of such techniques, whose fundamental goal is to present an overview of the data distribution in the form of a 2D scatterplot graph. It does so by reducing the dimensionality of the dataset in such a way that distances are preserved as much as possible. MP approaches, along with most visualizations, are shifting from a static display to a more interactive one, allowing human intervention to modify the layout and facilitate exploration and understanding of the data. In this thesis, I present contributions that specifically relate to interactive aspects of multidimensional projection. First, I propose a computational framework and methodology for control points selection. Control points are a particular set of projected points used to steer and rearrange the projection layout. I demonstrate the proposed method can improve the projection quality while requiring only a small amount of control points. Second, I introduce inverse projection, a novel paradigm to create multidimensional points exclusively through 2D interactions. The projection space is transformed into a canvas, where new points can be added. These new points are then mapped into the original multidimensional space, i.e., they become unique multidimensional instances themselves. Lastly, I present the usability of the inverse projection framework in two demonstration examples. (1) A parameter exploration prototype system for optimization with multiple minima. (2) A face-synthesis application, where new face models are generated on the fly.Item Open Access PetroVis & FractVis: Interactive Visual Exploration of High-dimensional Oil and Gas Data(2013-07-10) Mostafa, Ahmed E.; Costa Sousa, Mário; Sharlin, EhudMany processes within the oil and gas domain deal with ‘big data’–large sets of multidimensional data. Effectively analyzing these data sets is crucial to understanding the structure and the behaviour of oil and gas fields, and to the optimization of hydrocarbons production. However, experts face many challenges while attempting to analyze these data sets due to their high dimensionality, the inherent uncertainty of the data, and the lack of effective visual analytic interactive tools. In this thesis, we attempt to look for new ways to support domain experts in interpreting high dimensional oil and gas data. For the exploration we designed, implemented and evaluated two new interactive visualization tools: FractVis and PetroVis. Our design efforts involved characterization of two oil and gas domain case studies, namely: microseismic monitoring (in the design of FractVis) and petrographic analysis (in the design of PetroVis). For each of the case studies, we outline the necessary tasks, needs, and the challenges faced by the domain experts. By closely collaborating with domain experts we iteratively designed, implemented, and evaluated the two interactive novel visualization systems to simplify the exploration of high dimensional domain data. FractVis is a visualization tool aimed at supporting the visual analysis and exploration of the microseismic monitoring data. It combines, extends, and synchronizes parallel coordinates representation with other visualizations and interactions in order to facilitate the visual correlation of the data attributes. FractVis was further expanded by integrating new proxemic interaction and an interactive painting metaphor to simplify navigation and manipulation of the 3D microseismic data. The findings of our preliminary evaluation of FractVis suggest that the tool can provide insight regarding the simplification of the correlation of the microseismic data attributes, as detailed in the thesis. PetroVis is a novel interactive visualization system developed for exploring petrographic data. PetroVis integrates interactive visualization elements with domain-specific statistical features, to simplify the analysis process which involves (manual) validation of the automatic clustering of the data. The experts focus-group evaluation of PetroVis provided insight into the usefulness of the tool in simplifying the analysis of petrographic data clusters. We conclude this thesis by presenting a set of design heuristics, reflecting on lessons we have learned while designing FractVis and PetroVis, with the hope of aiding and guiding future research that targets visual exploration of high dimensional oil and gas data.Item Open Access Precise ink illustrations of polygonal models(2005) Foster, Kevin Graham; Costa Sousa, Mário; Wyvill, Brian