Immersive Analytics
Research in Immersive Analytics
We are bringing data out of computers and into the world around us. We've pioneered a research initiative called Immersive Analytics. Its promise is to help people to understand and work with complex data and analytical systems in new and more effective ways.
Our work explores the potential for new immersive display and interaction technologies—such as large interactive surfaces and augmented and virtual reality—to help people perform data analysis and enhance decision making.
We are currently hiring: Senior Technical Officer.
We have scholarships available for outstanding prospective PhD students. Intrigued? Inspired? Contact us
Recent projects (more here)
New immersive display and interaction technologies
Researchers: Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, Maxime Cordeil, Yalong Yang
Our aim is to support government and industry to make more informed decisions from data. We are developing a new research field in Immersive Analytics and the first practical tools and theoretical frameworks for immersive data analysis. Our research is informed by controlled studies and systematic design exploration. The expected outcomes are software tools that allow people to interact with complex data more fully and intuitively, as well as improved long-distance collaboration technologies.
Teaching buildings to learn and manage the energy they use
Researchers: Arnaud Prouzeau, Barrett Ens, Sarah Goodwin, Christoph Bergmeir, Tim Dwyer
Developing the world’s first "cognitive office" able to analyse and learn when to reduce energy consumption. Using historical data and Machine Learning to predict building behaviour we explore the use of immersive technology (Virtual and Augmented Reality) to supply insightful visualisation to building managers.
Spinifex: an R package allowing user-controlled steering of dynamic linear projections of numeric multivariate data.
Researchers: Kim Marriott, Nicholas Spyrison, Di Cook. Specifying the rotation of the projection in this way allows for fine exploration of the local structure of a projection. This is an important part of exploratory data analysis of multivariate data, which is hard to visualise as dimensionality increase. Linear projections map back to the original variable space while also viewing more variation than a static projection down to 2- or 3D. Going forward we will extend user-controlled steering and these dynamic projections to immersive 3D virtual reality spaces.
Fader Axes: A Design Space for Spatio-Data Coordination
Researchers: Maxime Cordeil, Tim Dwyer, Richard Based
In partnership with the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine (VIFM), we have invented and prototyped a novel physical spatio-coordinated interaction (PSI) device we call Fader Axes. This device assists doctors, medical and legal practitioners interact with CT scans or MRI images and extract useful information by leveraging the PSI. This device is pioneering medical investigations as currently 3D images from Medical Imaging Technology are only visualised on 2D computer screens. Even though Augmented and Mixed Reality (AR/MR) technology and mixed-reality head-mounted displays such as the Microsoft Hololens or the Meta 2, allow practitioners to visualise 3D data in an immersive way, interacting with a 3D scan remains challenging. Fader Axes allows practitioners to zoom into certain regions of the body and browse the ‘slices’ of a 3D scan to extract useful information and make a diagnosis. This device features 3D actuated sliders mounted on three physical axes that allow precise selection of axis-aligned regions within a 3D model.
Immersive Flow Maps
Researchers: Yalong Yang, Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, Bernhard Jenny, Maxime Cordeil
How should we visualise origin-destination flow data with virtual and augmented reality? We explore three different spatial encodings for flow maps. Our work suggests that careful use of the third spatial dimension can resolve visual clutter in complex flow maps.
This work was presented and published at IEEE InfoVis 2018.
The Immersive Analytics Toolkit - IATK
Researchers: Maxime Cordeil, Tim Dwyer, Benjamin Lee, Kim Marriott
IATK is the Immersive Analytics Toolkit, a Unity plugin tool designed to help the creation of interactive visualisations and visual analytics system in extended reality environments. IATK uses a simple grammar of graphics available through the Unity editor and an API to help designers make more advanced visualisations and interactions. The IATK was published at IEEE VR 2019. Watch a tutorial.
ImAxes
Researchers: Maxime Cordeil, Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott
ImAxes is an immersive system for exploring multivariate data using fluid, modeless interaction. The basic interface element is an embodied data axis. The user can manipulate these axes like physical objects in VR and combine them into sophisticated visualisations. The type of visualisation that appears depends on the proximity and relative orientation of the axes with respect to one another, which we describe with a formal grammar. This straightforward composability leads to a number of emergent visualisations and interactions. ImAxes was published at ACM UIST 2017. Watch ImAxes in action.
Maps and Globes in Virtual Reality
Researchers: Yalong Yang, Tim Dwyer, Kim Marriott, Bernhard Jenny, Maxime Cordeil
We compared globes, flat maps, egocentric globes, and curved maps for visualising world maps in virtual reality. We found that globes are often preferable for geographic visualisation in mixed-reality.
This work was presented and published at EuroVis 2018.