Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
14.4.4
Interface Design and Interactive Information
Visualization
Given the intensive preparation phase, the information was, at this point, ready to be
visualized and the interaction designed. We chose a very minimal layout, to allow
the user to focus on the interaction mechanism, providing little-to-none additional
detail beyond the emotional compass.
The interface development followed a two-phase sequence. First was designed a
rough interface to understand the accessibility and usability of this kind of tool. The
design was created in occasion of our Rome based tests, following a city wide riot
which had happened the previous year, and of which we had been able to capture
the social network activity.
In this first scenario a mobile application was designed that would poll the
database for new updates, which came under the form of a list of basic emotions
and their intensity in the various directions, relative to the user's current position.
In the first instance, we tried to use a standard AR canon, with the information
being displayed on top of the live camera feed. In this layout, an arrow constantly
showed the “forward” direction on the and was color-coded as to indicate the level of
danger for the current direction: from a vivid green showing a lack of evidence about
violence, to a full red denoting the presence of many violence-related messages in
that direction (see Fig.
14.1
).
While this configuration of the interface turned out to be really usable and
accessible, it did not satisfy us for its readability. The information shown was
extremely synthetic, bringing down the complexity of the available information to
a single color. Of course, this was in line with the idea of implementing a compass,
showing information about the direction in which the user is facing. But we felt
that the trade-off represented by loosing all of the missing information (such as
the declination of the different emotions involved in determining the output, or the
possibility to show the messages taken into account to make the decision) was too
steep.
In the next design iteration the information was, then, drawn on screen using a
radial diagram, while the on-board magnetic compass and accelerometer controlled
the diagram's rotation, to keep track of the user's heading and the device orientation
(see Fig.
14.2
).
The focus in this interface was to highlight the potentially dangerous scenarios,
so that users would be able to avoid going in their directions. For this the default
setup was pre-configured highlighting emotions of fear and grief, followed by anger
and sadness. The user was able to use the settings button on the interface to choose
from a drop-down (a scroll-wheel, on most smartphones) to choose from the other
available emotions, so that the experience and goal of the experience could be
personalized.
The third iteration of the interface was more general purpose (Fig.
14.3
).
In this new form, a the color coded emotions would surround the white center,
radially indicating the intensities of the emotions as they emerged around the user.
