Communications of the ACM

Design Principles for Visual Communication

wilmotli — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 14:06:35 -0700

Visual communication via diagrams, sketches, charts, photographs, video, and animation is fundamental to the process of exploring concepts and disseminating information. The most-effective visualizations capitalize on the human facility for processing visual information, thereby improving comprehension, memory, and inference. Skilled designers create such visualizations by applying cognitive design principles that define how visual techniques can be used to emphasize important information and de-emphasize irrelevant details.

Communications of the ACM

Plug-and-Play Macroscopes

cfrend — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 16:28:57 -0800

DECISION MAKING IN science, industry, and politics, as well as in daily life, requires that we make sense of data sets representing the structure and dynamics of complex systems. Analysis, navigation, and management of these continuously evolving data sets require a new kind of data-analysis and visualization tool we call a macroscope (from the Greek macros, or “great,” and skopein, or “to observe”) inspired by deRosnay’s futurist science writings.

Communications of the ACM

Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications

jpwachs — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 18:41:07 -0800

The use of hand gesture interfaces to control computer games, robots, medical visualization devices and crisis management systems allows an expressive, natural and intuitive way of interaction. However, in order to successfully implement hand gesture systems for diverse everyday environments, significant technical and usability challenges must be overcome. Such systems should have; fast response times, high recognition accuracy, ease of learning and a high degree of user satisfaction.

Vision-Based Hand-Gesture Applications

A Firm Foundation For Private Data Analysis

cdwork2003@yahoo.com — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 12:11:35 -0800

In the information realm, loss of privacy
is usually
associated with failure to control
access to
information, to control the flow of information, or
to control the purposes for which information
is
employed. Differential privacy arose in a context
in which ensuring privacy is a challenge even if all
these control problems are solved: privacy-preserving
statistical analysis of data.
The problem of statistical disclosure control—
revealing accurate statistics about a set of respondents
while preserving the privacy of individuals—has