Browsing by Author "Thudt, Alice"

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    The Bohemian Bookshelf Supporting Serendipitous Discoveries through Visualization
    (2011-08-17T21:23:21Z) Thudt, Alice; Hinrichs, Uta; Carpendale, Sheelagh
    Serendipity, a trigger of exciting discoveries when we least expect it, is currently being discussed as an often neglected but still important factor in information seeking processes, research, and ideation. In this paper we explore serendipity as an information visualization goal. In particular, we introduce the Bohemian Bookshelf visualization that aims to support serendipitous exploration of digital book collections. The Bohemian Bookshelf consists of five interlinked visualizations, each representing a unique (over)view of the collection. It facilitates serendipitous discoveries by (1) offering multiple access points by providing visualizations of different perspectives on the book collection, (2) enticing curiosity through abstract, metaphorical, and visually distinct representations of the collection, (3) highlighting alternate adjacencies between books, (4) providing multiple pathways for exploring the data collection in a flexible way, (5) supporting immediate previews of books, and (6) enabling a playful approach to information exploration. Our design goals and their exploration through the Bohemian Bookshelf visualization opens up a discussion on how to promote serendipity through information visualization.
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    The Bohemian Bookshelf: Supporting Serendipitous Book Discoveries through Information Visualization
    (ACM, 2012) Thudt, Alice; Hinrichs, Uta; Carpendale, Sheelagh
    Serendipity, a trigger of exciting yet unexpected discoveries, is an important but comparatively neglected factor in information seeking, research, and ideation. We suggest that serendipity can be facilitated through visualization. To explore this, we introduce the Bohemian Bookshelf, which aims to support serendipitous discoveries in the context of digital book collections. The Bohemian Bookshelf consists of five interlinked visualizations each offering a unique overview of the collection. It aims at encouraging serendipity by (1) offering multiple visual access points to the collection, (2) highlighting adjacencies between books, (3) providing flexible visual pathways for exploring the collection, (4) enticing curiosity through abstract, metaphorical, and visually distinct representations of books, and (5) enabling a playful approach to information exploration. A deployment at a library revealed that visitors embraced this approach of utilizing visualization to support open-ended explorations and serendipitous discoveries. This encourages future explorations into promoting serendipity through information visualization.
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    Visits: A Spatiotemporal Visualization of Location Histories
    (2013) Thudt, Alice; Baur, Dominikus; Carpendale, Sheelagh
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    Visualizations for Personal Reflection and Expression
    (2018-04-18) Thudt, Alice; Carpendale, Sheelagh; Wylant, Barry; Hinrichs, Uta; Willett, Wesley
    Research on visualizations of our growing personal data collections thus far has been predominantly geared towards behaviour-change. However, this focus may have overlooked opportunities for other meaningful ways to relate to personal data. People engage in a variety of activities to foster self-understanding, identity development, and strengthen their relationships. Such practices include writing diaries, connecting to others through personal stories, and collecting reminders of important accomplishments, events, and relationships. These forms of self-reflection, reminiscing, and self-expression can help us experience our lives as meaningful. The potential of visualizations for ``amplifying cognition'' and communicating data make them a promising means for supporting a wider range of self-reflective and expressive practices that have so far been little explored in visualization. In this thesis, I study the potential of visualizations of personal data for self-reflection and expression. As part of this research, I derive conceptual considerations for personal visualizations from research on everyday narrative practices, autobiographical memory, and the use of mementos. By relating and applying findings from these areas to visualization, I contribute design considerations for visualizations that support personal expression and reflection. I further explore example visualization approaches that address these design considerations. I contribute a visualization technique for reminiscing, and a system that allows people to create, reflect on, and share visualization mementos. I further describe a paradigm and construction kit that allow people without prior visualization, design or programming skills to construct personal visualizations. Finally, I present findings from qualitative studies that explore how individuals create and use visualizations for personal reflection and expression. The first investigation explores techniques for conveying subjective perspectives based on an analysis of narrative visualizations. The second study focuses on people's experiences with creating visualization mementos. The last study examines how people construct and reflect on personal visualizations in their domestic environment. These investigations allow me to validate and refine the proposed design considerations, evaluate the developed visualization approaches and point to interesting directions for future research. I hope that this research will contribute to the development of visualizations that encourage individual meaning-making with personal data by supporting diverse reflective and expressive practices.