GView
Having worked with Dr. John Stasko on the MonkEllipse and InfoCanvas visualization projects, a partner and I began work with him on a project for our GVU center. After an initial user needs survey/interview, our goals became:
- Get people to events they'd have otherwise missed
- Improve GVU awareness
- Provide GVU branding to outside visitors
We developed an ambient display that displayed upcoming events in chronologically ordered rings from the inside out of an eye modeled after the GVU logo. The closer the events get the more details are displayed and all rings are color coded for the event type.
The application is projected on a wall in the heart of the building in which GVU is housed. People walking up the nearby stairs, working at the adjacent whiteboards, going to their opposite offices, or going past it into the administrative wing may see the projection multiple times per day. We used a background gradient to ensure there are no hard edges, eliminating the familiar rectangular contrast change of normal projections. Aesthetic integration with the environment is rightfully a major goal of many informative art projects, and ours is no exception.
An evaluation revealed the strengths and weaknesses of our system, and our deliverable defined several specific design changes as well as open issues for further research. We have also completed a related project planning an online community for adding and discussing events, and creating special-interest groups.