Steve Haroz

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PhD Student

Overview

The goal of my research is to bridge the gap between computer science and psychology. This work falls into the computer science areas of HCI (human-computer interaction) and Visualization as well as the psychology and neuroscience areas of perception and attention.

Natural Visualization

spatial frequency explanationScientists have shown that the visual system is built to most efficiently represent natural stimulus. Natural images are noted to have power spectra that follow a f-2 trend. Since visualizations attempt to provide insight by sending data through the visual system, we tested visualization screenshots to test their power spectra. By running the results of the IEEE InfoVis contest through some image analysis, we found that the winners of the competition tend to have similar properties to the visual system.

Cosmological Visualization

spatial frequency explanationFor this project, we aimed to create an application that could visualize millions of simulated cosmological particles and show how each varied across time and simulation run. The resulting application uses custom controls, infovis views, scivis views, and graphics hardware to give users multiple, real-time, interactive perspectives of the differences between particles.

Perception of Optic Flow

spatial frequency explanationWhat are the limits of our perception of optic flow? How does it impact our ability to detect a features in fields of motion? We investigated these questions and explored the use of this visual feature in visualization. Paper submitted. Please contact for more info.

Layout of Multiple Views for Volume Visualization: A User Study

spatial frequency explanationIn this user study, we analyzed layout schemes of multiple views. The goal was to determine whether different arrangements were beneficial in understanding time-varying volume visualizations. We conducted a user study of four layout techniques for multiple views. Participants were timed as they separated different aspects of volume data for both time-invariant and time-variant data using one of four different layout schemes. For time-variant data, the multiple view layouts all resulted in better times than did the single view. Surprisingly, different layout techniques for multiple views resulted in no noticeable difference in user performance.