Background. Active self-management is a process where patients are fully engaged in managing thei... more Background. Active self-management is a process where patients are fully engaged in managing their health in daily life by having access to contextualized health data and tailored guidance to support a healthy lifestyle. The current study aims to determine whether an e-health intervention which incorporates symptom/disease activity monitoring and physical activity counselling can improve self-management ability in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods. The Empowering active self-management of arthritis: Raising the bar with OPERAS (an On-demand Program to EmpoweR Active Self-management) project is a randomized controlled trial which uses a delayed control design. 134 participants with RA will be randomized to either start the intervention immediately (Immediate Group) or start 6 months later (Delayed Group). The intervention involves: 1) use of a Fitbit-compatible web app to record and monitor their RA disease activity, symptoms and time spent on physical activity and a F...
Background. Active self-management is a process where patients are fully engaged in managing thei... more Background. Active self-management is a process where patients are fully engaged in managing their health in daily life by having access to contextualized health data and tailored guidance to support a healthy lifestyle. The current study aims to determine whether an e-health intervention which incorporates symptom/disease activity monitoring and physical activity counselling can improve self-management ability in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods. The Empowering active self-management of arthritis: Raising the bar with OPERAS (an On-demand Program to EmpoweR Active Self-management) project is a randomized controlled trial which uses a delayed control design. 134 participants with RA will be randomized to either start the intervention immediately (Immediate Group) or start 6 months later (Delayed Group). The intervention involves: 1) use of a Fitbit-compatible web app to record and monitor their RA disease activity, symptoms and time spent on physical activity and a F...
ACM SIGGRAPH 97 Visual Proceedings: The art and interdisciplinary programs of SIGGRAPH '97 on - SIGGRAPH '97, 1997
Texture maps representing linear and arc measurement scales provide a visually accessible set of ... more Texture maps representing linear and arc measurement scales provide a visually accessible set of measurements without adding scene clutter or auxiliary measurement widgets.
The NSF Digital Clay project is focused on the design, prototyping, integration, and validation o... more The NSF Digital Clay project is focused on the design, prototyping, integration, and validation of a computercontrolled physical device capable of taking any of a wide range of possible shapes in response to changes in a digital 3D model or to changes in the pressure exercised upon it by human hands. Although it clearly is a natural and unavoidable evolution of 3D graphical user interfaces, its unprecedented capabilities constitute a major leap in technologies and paradigms for 3D display, for 3D input, and for collaborative 3D design. In this paper, we provide an overview of the Digital Clay project and discuss the challenges, design choices, and initial solutions for a new Finger Sculpting interface designed for the Digital Clay and prototyped using conventional 3D I/O hardware.
Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, 2017
Pokémon Go is a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game that blends gameplay with real-life outdoor ph... more Pokémon Go is a mobile Augmented Reality (AR) game that blends gameplay with real-life outdoor physical activity. In this game, players locate, catch and interact with virtual creatures called Pokémon. Initial reports and online players' statistics suggest that Pokémon Go motivates players to go outside and become more active. This paper describes an online survey we designed and conducted with players from varied locations and different backgrounds. The goal was to gain initial insight about WHY players spend time on this game and WHAT are their primary motivations; WHEN and HOW they play the game; and WHAT potential changes in physical activity Pokémon Go may elicit from players. Free-to-play, location-based AR mobile games like Pokémon Go are likely to become a new design model for gamified applications that promote physical activity. However, our results imply that in order to sustain motivation and physical activity, the core gameplay and mechanics require thoughtful and engaging design. Further long-term research is needed to understand the benefits and concerns of the game.
Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2017
Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to work as a non-pharmacological analgesic by distr... more Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) has been shown to work as a non-pharmacological analgesic by distracting patients from their acute pain for short periods of time. However, few researchers have investigated the effectiveness of mobile "Cardboard VR" for chronic pain patients. In this research, the viability of the Cardboard VR was examined by comparing it to another Head-Mounted Display (HMD), the Oculus Rift (OR), a desktop HMD. A randomized crossover study was conducted in a pain clinic with 30 chronic pain patients. OR was found to be significantly more effective than both the Cardboard VR and the control condition. Nevertheless, the results of this study demonstrate that Mobile VR has potential to become an effective tool for managing chronic pain because it is comparatively more affordable than VR that is restricted to desktop computers, because it can be deployed in numerous contexts, and because of its ease of use.
Proceedings of the 1999 workshop on new paradigms in information visualization and manipulation in conjunction with the eighth ACM internation conference on Information and knowledge management - NPIVM '99, 1999
This paper describes our recent findings in the area of using glyph shape to display one or two d... more This paper describes our recent findings in the area of using glyph shape to display one or two data dimensions in the visualization of 3D scalar and vector fields. In our glyph-based visualization system, each glyph represents a data point in 3D space. Visual attributes such as size, orientation, color and transparency can be mapped to data dimensions in the 3D space. We are exploring the use of glyph shape as a display dimension, using superquadric superellipses as a means of supplying a parameterizable shape. A basic factor in effectively using shape for quantitative visualization is determining how many (and which) superellipse shapes people can distinguish. Since the superquadric shape's parameter set is not perceptually linear, we conducted a user study to which shapes people can generally distinguish. The findings show that with large superellipses, about 22 separate shapes can be distinguished on average. These results provide the foundation for exploring how effective superellipses may be in quantitative shape visualizaton.
One in five people in North America experience chronic pain. The primary non-pharmacological appr... more One in five people in North America experience chronic pain. The primary non-pharmacological approach to treat chronic pain is to 'manage' pain by practices like Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Meditation. Previous research shows the potential of mindfulness meditation to help foster patients' emotional wellbeing and pain self-modulation. Thus, the Virtual Reality (VR) system named "Virtual Meditative Walk" (VMW) was developed to help patients direct their attention inward through mindfulness meditation, which incorporates biofeedback sensors, an immersive virtual environment, and stereoscopic sound. It was specifically designed to help patients to learn MBSR meditation by providing real-time feedback, and to provide further training reinforcement. VMW enables patients to manage their chronic pain by providing real-time immersive visual signals and sonic feedback, which are mapped to their physiological biofeedback data. In the proof-of-concept study, this combination of immersive VR and MBSR meditation pain self-modulation technique proved to be effective for managing chronic pain.
Joint Eurographics - IEEE TCVG Symposium on Visualization, 2005
This paper describes a framework we have developed for the visual analysis of large-scale phyloge... more This paper describes a framework we have developed for the visual analysis of large-scale phylogeny hierarchies populated with the genomic data of various organisms. This framework allows the user to quickly browse the phylogeny hierarchy of organisms from the highest level down to the level of an individual genome for the desired organism of interest. Based on this framework, the
Proceedings of the ACM symposium on Virtual reality software and technology - VRST '01, 2001
In this paper, we introduce a new style of visualization called Situational Visualization, in whi... more In this paper, we introduce a new style of visualization called Situational Visualization, in which the user of a robust, mobile visualization system uses mobile computing resources to enhance the experience and understanding of the surrounding world. Additionally, a Situational Visualization system allows the user to add to the visualization and any underlying simulation by inputting the user's observations of the phenomena of interest, thus improving the quality of visualization for the user and for any other users that may be connected to the same database. Situational Visualization allows many users to collaborate on a common set of data with real-time acquisition and insertion of data. In this paper, we present a Situational Visualization system we are developing called Mobile VGIS, and present two sample applications of Situational Visualization.
ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems, 2014
We introduce a propagation-based parametric symbolic model approach to support analytic provenanc... more We introduce a propagation-based parametric symbolic model approach to support analytic provenance. This approach combines a script language to capture and encode the analytic process and a parametrically controlled symbolic model to represent and reuse the analytic process. Our approach first appeared in a visual analytics system called CZSaw. Capturing the analyst's interactions at a meaningful system action level as CZSaw scripts creates a parametrically controlled symbolic model in the form of a directed acyclic graph capable of propagating changes. Nodes in the graph (variables in CZSaw scripts) are results (data and data visualizations) generated from user interactions. Graph edges represent dependency relationships among results. The user interacts with the variables representing entities or relations to generate the next step's results. Any change to a variable triggers the propagation mechanism to update downstream variables and in turn update data views to reflect the change. The analyst can reuse parts of the analysis process by assigning new values to a node in the middle of the graph. We evaluated this symbolic model approach through solving three IEEE VAST "Challenge" contest problems [IEEE VAST 2008; 2009; 2010]. In each Challenge the analyst first created a symbolic model to help explore, understand, analyze, and solve a particular sub-problem, and later reused the model via its dependency graph propagation mechanism to solve similar sub-problems.
Proceedings of the 2003 conference on Diversity in computing - TAPIA '03, 2003
The Firefighter Command Training Virtual Environment is being developed at Georgia Tech in collab... more The Firefighter Command Training Virtual Environment is being developed at Georgia Tech in collaboration with the Atlanta Fire Department. The VE allows the user to: navigate around the environment, viewing a house on fire from any angle; command firefighters and watch them execute those commands; and see realistic fire and smoke behavior reacting to changes in the environment. The VE user is a commanding officer trainee who instructs teams of virtual firefighters to perform different actions to help put out virtual fires. The correct sequence of commands will successfully extinguish the flame with the least amount of danger to the firefighters and the least amount of damage to the home. This simulation was developed using the Simple Virtual Environment (SVE) library, an extensible framework for building VE applications. This is the first example of a firefighter training environment that combines representations of animated firefighters with a reasonable simulation and animation of smoke and fire.
IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control
In this paper a new quadric-based view-dependent simplification scheme is presented. The scheme p... more In this paper a new quadric-based view-dependent simplification scheme is presented. The scheme provides a method to connect mesh simplification controlled by a quadric error metric with a level-of-detail hierarchy that is accessed continuously and efficiently based on current view parameters. A variety of methods for determining the screen-space metric for the view calculation are implemented and evaluated, including an appearance-preserving method that has both geometry-and texture-preserving aspects. Results are presented and compared for a variety of models.
CZSaw [1] is a visual analytics tool for sense-making across entities, documents, and relations w... more CZSaw [1] is a visual analytics tool for sense-making across entities, documents, and relations with a focus on supporting the analysis process. It uses a variety of flexible data visualizations to represent and explore networks of entities and relations from different perspectives. CZSaw supports clustering documents and entities into smaller groups to make sense of them and weave individual facts into a complete picture. CZSaw also provides entity refinement functions to support interactive data cleaning. Its dependency propagation mechanism speeds the analysis sensemaking loop by automatically synchronizing data and views, and propagating changes to the whole system.
Visual analytics tools provide powerful visual representations in order to support the sense-maki... more Visual analytics tools provide powerful visual representations in order to support the sense-making process. In this process, analysts typically iterate through sequences of steps many times, varying parameters each time. Few visual analytics tools support this process well, nor do they provide support for visualizing and understanding the analysis process itself. To help analysts understand, explore, reference, and reuse their analysis process, we present a visual analytics system named CzSaw (See-Saw) that provides an editable and re-playable history navigation channel in addition to multiple visual representations of document collections and the entities within them (in a manner inspired by Jigsaw [24]). Conventional history navigation tools range from basic undo and redo to branching timelines of user actions. In CzSaw's approach to this, first, user interactions are translated into a script language that drives the underlying scripting-driven propagation system. The latter allows analysts to edit analysis steps, and ultimately to program them. Second, on this base, we build both a history view showing progress and alternative paths, and a dependency graph showing the underlying logic of the analysis and dependency relations among the results of each step. These tools result in a visual model of the sense-making process, providing a way for analysts to visualize their analysis process, to reinterpret the problem, explore alternative paths, extract analysis patterns from existing history, and reuse them with other related analyses.
The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital co... more The author has further granted permission to Simon Fraser University to keep or make a digital copy for use in its circulating collection (currently available to the public at the "Institutional Repository" link of the SFU Library website <www.lib.sfu.ca> at: <http://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/112>) and, without changing the content, to translate the thesis/project or extended essays, if technically possible, to any medium or format for the purpose of preservation of the digital work. The author has further agreed that permission for multiple copying of this work for scholarly purposes may be granted by either the author or the Dean of Graduate Studies. It is understood that copying or publication of this work for financial gain shall not be allowed without the author's written permission. Permission for public performance, or limited permission for private scholarly use, of any multimedia materials forming part of this work, may have been granted by the author. This information may be found on the separately catalogued multimedia material and in the signed Partial Copyright Licence. While licensing SFU to permit the above uses, the author retains copyright in the thesis, project or extended essays, including the right to change the work for subsequent purposes, including editing and publishing the work in whole or in part, and licensing other parties, as the author may desire.
This paper describes a new technique for the multi-dimensional visualization of data through auto... more This paper describes a new technique for the multi-dimensional visualization of data through automatic procedural generation of glyph shapes based on mathematical functions. Our glyph-based Stereoscopic Field Analyzer (SFA) system allows the visualization of both regular and irregular grids of volumetric data. SFA uses a glyph's location, 3D size, color and opacity to encode up to 8 attributes of scalar data per glyph. We have extended SFA's capabilities to explore shape variation as a visualization attribute. We opted for a procedural approach, which allows flexibility, data abstraction, and freedom from specification of detailed shapes. Superquadrics are a natural choice to satisfy our goal of automatic and comprehensible mapping of data to shape. For our initial implementation we have chosen superellipses. We parameterize superquadrics to allow continuous control over the "roundness" or "pointiness" of the shape in the two major planes which intersect to form the shape, allowing a very simple, intuitive, abstract schema of shape specification.
This book chapter explores issues of interaction and stereoscopic display in multi-scale virtual ... more This book chapter explores issues of interaction and stereoscopic display in multi-scale virtual environments. When interaction, especially direct manipulation, is combined with stereoscopic display, there are trade-offs that must be considered when optimizing both. The chapter addresses the design issues for different types of large displays and then concentrates on the virtual workbench for an implementation that balances interaction and stereoscopic display needs. The general importance of recognizing and using specifically defined geometric areas of user interest is demonstrated. A multi-scale application is then developed, and the implementation is evaluated. When good and stable stereoscopic display is present, users gain much in their ability to perceive shape, depth, and spatial relations. This makes interaction techniques more powerful and suggests new techniques.
Although people are quite accurate in visually perceiving absolute egocentric distances in real e... more Although people are quite accurate in visually perceiving absolute egocentric distances in real environments up to 20m, they usually underestimate distances in virtual environments presented through head-mounted displays (HMDs). Several previous studies examined different potential factors, but none of these factors could convincingly explain the observed distance compressionin HMDs. In this study, we investigated the potential influence of naturalistic stimulus presentation and display size-a factor largely overlooked in previous studies. To this end, we used an indirect blindfolded walking task to previously-seen targets. Participants viewed photos of targets located at various distances on the ground through different-sized displays (HMD, 24" monitor, and 50" screen) and walked without vision to where they thought the location of the target was. Real-world photographs were used to avoid potential artifacts of computer-graphics stimuli. Displays were positioned to provide identical fields of view (32 o × 24 o). Distance judgments were unexpectedly highly accurate and showed no signs of distance compression for any of the displays. Moreover, display size did not affect distance perception, and performance was virtually identical to a real world baseline, where real-world targets were viewed through 32 o × 24 o field of view restrictors. A careful analysis of potential underlying factors suggests that the typicallyobserved distance compression for HMDs might be overcome by using naturalistic real-world stimuli. This might also explain why display size did not affect distance judgments.
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Papers by Chris D Shaw