visualization studio

Two Years of Experience at the University of Calgary

John Brosz & Shawna Sadler

CNI Spring MeetingApril 1, 2014

Visualization Studio

Shawna1. Intent, mandate & strategy2. Design with faculty & graduate students3. Build phase4. Pictures of the Visualization Studio5. Policies6. Hiring Manager, qualifications, job

description

Presentation Outline

John1. Marketing & awareness2. Data analysis of useage3. Examples of work4. Evaluations5. Upgrading6. Lessons Learned

Completion Winter 2010 265,000 sq.ft. $205 Million Project

Taylor Family Digital Library

Providing outstanding support for Scholarship, Learning and the Creation of Knowledge, Libraries and Cultural Resources is a key component in the University’s Excellence in Research, Teaching and Community Service.

We will fulfill this vision through a convergence of our Libraries, Museum, Archives, Special Collections and University Press and through campus, community, national and international partnerships.

We Should Imagine Greatness

State-of-the-art Learning and Research Centre

The Vision

Students Faculty Community Researchers

The Taylor as an Instrument of Research

Themes• Agile – All spaces and technology infrastructures must be easily adaptable to changing student and researcher needs

• Contemporary – Spaces and technologies must remain cutting edge, so to give our UofC Community unique access to innovation

• Inspiring – Technologies must leverage opportunities for our students and researchers in exciting new ways

• Innovative – The Library Technology staff must apply a high-level of creativity to selecting and employing technologies in the library


Presenter

Presentation Notes

Now we are going to focus on the Visualization Studio

Intent

Dedicated space in the library for faculty and graduate students to conduct research with cutting edge technologies

Tom HickersonVice Provost, Libraries and Cultural Resources, University LibrarianUniversity of Calgary

MandateProvide meaningful space, technologies and services to enhance the research effort of the University of Calgary faculty and graduate students

Strategy

Engage faculty and graduate students in the design, purchase, and operationalization of the new space.

Architecture Computer Science Environmental Design Geology Library Medicine Sociology

Original idea… 3D CAVE

http://pauillac.inria.fr/~codognet/VR.html

Presenter

Presentation Notes

-Original proposal was a 3D cave, Responded passionately against the CAVE - All committed to actively participating in the design and purchase of equipment for the research space

Design with Faculty & Grad Students

Dr. Sheelagh Carpendale Dr. Miguel Nacenta Dr. Uta Hinrichs

Presenter

Presentation Notes

-- Dr. Sheelagh Carpendale in the dept of computer science volunteered her time as well as the time of her students in her lab to propose a design for this new space. I gathered requirements from the faculty committee in the form of a project management program, sent it to Sheelagh and waited for their response.

TFDL VIZ ROOM1. An environment for collaborative discovery

2. Will allow you to do things that you can’t at your desktop

3. Should be a similar experience to working on your computer

4. Future proof so the room can remain cutting edge for years to come

5. Dedicated staff to support researchers in the room

6. No bezels to interrupt the image(s) on the screen

7. Design to respect research data and the ethical use of using sensitive data

8. Keep policies to a minimum so not to constrain research activities

Requirements from Researchers

TFDL VIZ ROOM1. An environment for collaborative discovery

Lots of moveable furniture, electrical plugs, good wireless infrastructure, virtual

collaboration opportunities

2. Will allow you to do things that you can’t at your desktop

Big screen, easily share content with colleagues, does not require special programming to

run applications in the environment

3. Future proof so the room can remain cutting edge for years to come

Make sure your operating budget can keep this space useful

… Translation

TFDL VIZ ROOM1. Dedicated staff to support researchers in the room

We’re tired of not having the support we need to conduct our research

2. No bezels to interrupt the image(s) on the screen

Example- dataset

3. Design to respect research data & the ethical use of using sensitive data

Protect sensitive data, no windows, secure door, secure physical and virtual environment

4. Keep policies to a minimum so not to constrain research activities

Let me do what I need to do, ie. Cater and serve alcohol in the space

… Translation

Concept High-definition Touch Wall

Large Interactive Tabletop

Small Auxiliary Interactive Tabletops

Interactive Rotatable Displays

Presenter

Presentation Notes

So Sheelagh and her students spent a weekend brain storming possibilities for this room, here are the images they created to propose their idea. Here you can see an overview of the room. You can see that one of the wall is covered by a high-resolution display wall. The other wall mounts several rotatable displays, And there are also several tabletop displays, one high resolution for controlling the other displays

Our Design• Hi resolution wall (touch or gesture)• Configurable display wall (touch)• Large central multi-touch table• Several small multi-touch tables• A sofa

The New Design

High Definition DisplaysKey Feature, High Definition Displays

To display large amounts of data

To display high resolution (research quality) data

To enable collaboration among researchers

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The most prominent characteristic of the design is the multiplicity of high resolution displays, which addresses the issues of the large amounts of data, but also facilitates collaboration.

Configurable Space

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Last but not least, the suggested space would be configurable. Not only because the tables are meant to be moved around, but especially because the rotatable display wall enables a lot of possible configurations. You can see, for example, on the bottom left, just a simple configuration where the rotatable displays just work as a secondary flat wall, but by changing some of the orientations of the display as in the top right, the space is divided in semi-private spaces for use by different people; or, as is displayed on the left, you can see a space configured to be completely visible for a person sitting behind the table, which works as a console.

34.5 million pixels16’ X 6’

Presenter

Presentation Notes

This graph that John created shows the relative quality of the image in our Visualization Studio compared to more common displays. SLR Cameras, the blue line, Desktop display, the red line and then our Vis Studio as the green dot up here.

15 projectorsColor & brightness balancedSmall bezels (1mm)

Presenter

Presentation Notes

A smooth continuous surface

7.1 Surround Sound

55” Touch TableSMART

• 34.5 million pixels (9600 X 3600)

• 16’ X 6’• Windows OS• Dual Xeon E5-2687 3.1 GHz

Processors w/ 96 GB RAM• 4 NVidia Quadro K5000

graphics cards• 55” LCD HD Touch Table

• 27” All-in-One PC –Presentation Console

• 7.1 Surround Sound• 5 DVI + 5 VGA video inputs• 1mm bezels• Christie Entero DLP Projectors

– 60,000 hr bulb life

Tech Specs

Hiring the ManagerWhat we needed as per committee…

Technical• Programming languages, C ++, C Sharp and Java• Graphics programming libraries and/or frameworks• Hardware experience, large display environments

People Skills• Experience working in team environments• Presentation skills• Some evidence of self-motivation• Leadership

Hiring the ManagerWhat we asked for on the job description…

Qualifications/Expertise Required:

Education:A minimum of a Masters degree in Computer Science or other relevant masters degreeis required. Ideally, education will reflect a combination of technology and visualization courses.

Required Experience:Five to ten years of experience related to technical support and visualization is required.

Strong leadership skills and the ability to exercise responsibility over a physical area and the equipment within it.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

These are the highlights of the job description

Desired Experience:Ability to balance priorities and workloads, working both independently and collaboratively

Strong verbal, written and presentation skills

Extensive customer service and troubleshooting skills

Previous experience with budget preparation and grant proposals

Must have the capability to successfully manage multiple competing priorities with minimal supervision and direction

Technical Skills:PC SupportExperience with Windows OS, PC hardware, troubleshooting in a PC environment and providing public support in a PC environment

Visualization Software SupportExperienced at supporting research-level use of visualization software.

Visualization SupportSuperior knowledge of visualizations in various forms and extensive knowledge and participation in visualization communities.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Later in the presentation I’ll speak to adjustments I would make to this description if I were to write it today

Hiring the ManagerWho we hired…

John Brosz, Ph.D. Computer Science

Background in Data Visualization & 3D Graphics

Hiring the ManagerWhy researchers value John…

1. Ph.D.2. Has conducted research himself3. Has published work4. Computer Science background, comfortable tackling

difficult issues5. Approachable & accessible6. Cares and is interested in the research brought to the

Studio

Presenter

Presentation Notes

He has a Ph.D. he has conducted original reserfch, has is published, he is one of them. In this high-tech environment, all researchers take comfort in John’s background in computer science. What really makes John successful in this environment is his personality.

Uta Hinrichs & Prof. Sheelagh Carpendale

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Examples of how the Visualization Studio has been used to date. Fat Fonts- a new font style to visually communicate quantitative data, hard to appreciate on a small screen, but it shines on the big wall

ASE Lab (Prof. Frank Maurer) & Industry Partner C4i

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Presentation Notes

Computer Science professor Frank Maurer with graduate students presenting various data to industry partners

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Also works well for presentation. We’ve held workshops (like this one – teaching Psychology graduate students how to process fmri data). Also we’ve have public consultations and open houses, consultations with industrial partners.

Dan Perry, Photography by Dave Brown

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Presentation Notes

Patrick Finn’s play based on the book Bitter Medicine (Clem Martini). Exploring schizophrenia.

Frank Maurer, Chris Burns, Daniel Sabourin, Patrick King, & Teddy SeyedASE Lab http://ase.cpsc.ucalgary.ca

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Demonstrating multi-surface technologies and applications for the media

http://ase.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/

Presenter

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Use of maps. In this project comparing a Calgary community’s past to its present layout. Also have had other groups looking at: distribution of liquor stores before and after privatization Nursing undergrads mapping child care resources. Satellite maps of foilage coverage across Alberta Heat maps of homes across Calgary

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Presentation Notes

Our nursing faculty used the Visualization Studio to present an overview of their curriculum and how each year of courses support the nursing learning requirements set out by provincial and federal regulatory bodies.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Another significant area is in working with images. One major benefit of the extra screen real estate is that it provides room to layout and work with large groups of images. It is much easier to group, categorize, or identify themes when you can see 50+ images at the same time.

Presenter

Presentation Notes

The other side of working with images is that when you have high resolution imagery you can actually see all of the detail in the image. For instance in the image on the left you can walk up and see brush strokes, cracks in the paint, and so forth. We have had several faculty members, primarily from the humanities, come in to look at these sorts of high resolution images.

Prof. Murray McGillivray, Kelsey Moskall, & Jaclyn Carter http://gawain-ms.ca/

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Probably the best example of this Murray McGillivray in our English department. His specialty is medieval english manuscripts and he originally came to the visualization studio so he could work in photoshop with them. The idea was to adjust the contrast and other settings so that the text can be more easily read. On a normal desktop you'd have to zoom in, adjust the contrast to make sure you see the details necessary, and then zoom out to make sure this looked good across the entire image. In the Studio you simply adjust the contrast on the full image; it is quite easy to see when you've found the optimal setting.

http://gawain-ms.ca/

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Here we can see a couple of the pages Prof McGillivray was working with. Quite difficult to read. Anyway, Murray was working on this with his former PhD student who wrote her thesis on the marginalia (all the marks in the margins of the document) and she found something very exciting . . .

Presenter

Presentation Notes

I've blow in up here but you should be able to make out a small hand pointing at a line of text. Looking through all the pages they found several more instances of these markings. This was an entirely new finding & they were able to publish this finding right away.

Health

ArtsEducation

Business/Law

Science

Engineering

Env. Design

IT/Facilities

2012Q3

2012Q4

2013Q1

2013Q2

1 or more bookings by the same person.

=

o SPSSo NVivoo Statao ArcGISo MATLABo Mathematicao Tableauo AutoCADo 3DSMax

Software Used in the Visualization Studio

Original PC good at running multiple applications, particularly multiple real-time applications

A year after the studio opened a PC became available to render 3D images on the large screen

Hardware Upgrade

Valuable CharacteristicsVisualization Studio- Politically neutral position on campus- Collaborative Workspace- No windows, protect privacy of data- High Resolution- Lots of digital Real-Estate- Wall looks great in P.R. photos & video- Flexible furniture available to arrange the

room in various configurations- Open to new uses of the space

Valuable PoliciesVisualization Studio- Allow food & drink, encourage catered

events in the space- Restricted to Faculty & Graduate Students

(no undergrads)- Can reserve the studio a maximum of 7

consecutive days- Access the studio when the library is open

(7am to 11pm, 7 days a week)- Card access to specific researchers

Available to researchers, July 2012

Evaluating Usage

Standard MeasuresPost-use questionnaire

Count:BookingsToursFacultyStudentsResearch areasPublicationsDays in use

Evaluating Usage

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Raw numbers & linear trend lines for the number of tours & number of bookings. Shows a definite increase in usage. For some reason September & October are slow months (both this year & last).

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Presentation Notes

Percentage of weekdays the room has any sort of activity in it (tour or booking). Days that have 3 or 4 events happening are counted the same as a days where the room is only fired up for a 10 minute tour.

Lessons LearnedStaff

1. Research Coordinator (John)2. Technical assistance to assist John

when needed3. Marketing, promotions, event

planning4. Library administrator to liaise with

campus researchers

Presenter

Presentation Notes

- Everybody involved appreciated the vendor shootout where vendors were made to bring hardware. This is where you see what really works and whether your computer works with your screen. What would we change Room size? Lifting walls / glass that can go opaque Sustainability budget Multi touch Evolution of bezel size Life cycle Upgrades Keep up to the technology 4 or 5 years More power outlets, more data outlets, better wireless� An interesting point is that Visualization Rooms really emphasize the current dichotomy between IT and AV. To make this work both have to be brought together . . .

Lessons LearnedAnother room or a moveable wall- A smaller more intimate space - A larger space for teaching and big

events

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Presentation Notes


Lessons Learned

Vendor shootout

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Presentation Notes


Shawna SadlerAUL, Digital Library & Research [email protected]

Thankslibrary.ucalgary.ca/visualizationstudio

John BroszVisualization Research [email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Extra Slides

Image from http://eamonokane.com/work/4_ideal_collection

2. Image Analysis

http://www.eamonokane.com/work/4_ideal_collection

Sonia-Cristina Badescu, Supervisor: Prof. Beverly Sandalack

Presenter

Presentation Notes

Use of maps. In this project comparing a Calgary community’s past to its present layout. Also have had other groups looking at: distribution of liquor stores before and after privatization Nursing undergrads mapping child care resources. Satellite maps of foilage coverage across Alberta Heat maps of homes across Calgary

Colleen MacLeod & Faculty of Nursing