The technological building blocks are in place to address six major challenges for natural visualization interfaces to enable an exciting future where natural interfaces powerfully strengthen and expand the use of visualizations in science, engineering, art, and the humanities. T he ability to picture and interact with concepts in new ways has always been intrinsic to the process of discovery. For example, Muybridge's classic stroboscopic photographs of horses led to the discovery that all four of a horse's hooves leave the ground during a gallop; at the time, this hypothesis was called "unsupported transit." Da Vinci's hand-drawn studies of rushing water informed not only his art but also the science of hydrodynamics. Today, engineers, scientists, and artists routinely rely on physical models and 3D prototypes-often, the physical act of touching, rotating, and annotating these models is what brings forth new insights. Imagine if these visual, physical, and spatial human activities could take place in a virtual data visualization space, where powerful computational techniques could combine with natural human interactions and visual communication. The key to enabling this exciting future for visualization lies in making the graphical visualization tools we build fit seamlessly into the workflows of scientists, engineers, and other users. Against the current computing landscape, we see a logical path to achieve this progress through new research in natural user interfaces for scientific visualization-research that specifically addresses the challenges of incorporating new, natural means of input and display in the visualization process. The term natural user interfaces is used in various contexts, 1 often referring to the explosion of multitouch interfaces made popular by recent phones, tablets, and surface computing. A common, and simplistic, assumption is that merely using a touch interface produces "natural interaction." We conceive of natural user interfaces, however, as well-designed human-computer interfaces that enable fluid, often modeless, interaction with computers by interpreting direct physical or spatial input, potentially from several users. This concept contrasts with traditional PC-based interfaces that rely on the mouse and keyboard for input, which are not only indirect forms of input but also focus on a single interacting person. Creating natural interfaces requires solving fundamental research problems to enable scientists to more effectively interact with data. Here, we focus specifically on visualization involving datasets that are inherently two-or three-dimensional and their special constraints, 2 as opposed to working with more abstract data-an area in which efforts to leverage natural interaction have also recently gained traction. 3, 4
Designing effective interaction theories and methods is regarded as a main challenge for scientific visualization REF .
Reimagining the Scientific Visualization Interaction Paradigm
Computer
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Computer Science