[pt] A visualização volumétrica é uma importante técnica para a exploração de dados tridimensionais complexos, como, por exemplo, o resultado de análises numéricas usando o método dos elementos finitos. A aplicação eficiente dessa técnica a malhas não-estruturadas tem sido uma importante área de pesquisa nos últimos anos. Há dois métodos básicos para a visualização dos dados volumétricos: extração de superfícies e renderização direta de volumes. Na primeira, iso-superfícies de um campo escalar são extraídas explicitamente. Na segunda, que é a utilizada neste trabalho, dados escalares são classificados a partir de uma função de transferência, que mapeia valores do campo escalar em cor e opacidade, para serem visualizados. Com a evolução das placas gráficas (GPU) dos computadores pessoais, foram desenvolvidas novas técnicas para visualização volumétrica interativa de malhas não-estruturadas. Os novos algoritmos tiram proveito da aceleração e da possibilidade de programação dessas placas, cujo poder de processamento cresce a um ritmo superior ao dos processadores convencionais (CPU). Este trabalho avalia e compara dois algoritmos para visualização volumétrica de malhas não-estruturadas, baseados em GPU: projeção de células independente do observador e traçado de raios. Adicionalmente, são propostas duas adaptações dos algoritmos estudados. Para o algoritmo de projeção de células, propõe-se uma estruturação dos dados na GPU para eliminar o alto custo de transferência de dados para a placa gráfica. Para o algoritmo de traçado de raios, propõe-se fazer a integração da função de transferência na GPU, melhorando a qualidade da imagem final obtida e permitindo a alteração da função de transferência de maneira interativa. / [en] Volume visualization is an important technique for the exploration of threedimensional complex data sets, such as the results of numerical analysis using the finite elements method. The efficient application of this technique to unstructured meshes has been an important area of research in the past few years. There are two basic methods to visualize volumetric data: surface extraction and direct volume rendering. In the first, the iso-surfaces of the scalar field are explicitly extracted. In the second, which is the one used in this work, scalar data are classified by a transfer function, which maps the scalar values to color and opacity, to be visualized. With the evolution of personal computer graphics cards (GPU), new techniques for volume visualization have been developed. The new algorithms take advantage of modern programmable graphics cards, whose processing power increases at a faster rate than the one observed in conventional processors (CPU). This work evaluates and compares two GPU- based algorithms for volume visualization of unstructured meshes: view- independent cell projection (VICP) and ray-tracing. In addition, two adaptations of the studied algorithms are proposed. For the cell projection algorithm, we propose a GPU data structure in order to eliminate the high costs of the CPU to GPU data transfer. For the raytracing algorithm, we propose to integrate the transfer function in the GPU, which increases the quality of the generated image and allows to interactively change the transfer function.

This study has been carried out in cooperation with Unilever and partly with the EC founded project, Smartdoc IST-2000-28137. In areas of statistics and image processing, both the amount of data and the dimensions are increasing rapidly and an interactive visualization tool that lets the user perform real-time analysis can save valuable time. Real-time cropping and drill-down considerably facilitate the analysis process and yield more accurate decisions. In the Smartdoc project, there has been a request for a component used for smart filtering in multidimensional data sets. As the Smartdoc project aims to develop smart, interactive components to be used on low-end systems, the implementation of the self-organizing map algorithm proposes which dimensions to visualize. Together with Dr. Robert Treloar at Unilever, the SOM Visualizer - an application for interactive visualization and analysis of multidimensional data - has been developed. The analytical part of the application is based on Kohonen’s self-organizing map algorithm. In cooperation with the Smartdoc project, a component has been developed that is used for smart filtering in multidimensional data sets. Microsoft Visual Basic and components from the graphics library AVS OpenViz are used as development tools.

Storytelling is a way of packaging the knowledge and insights gained from analyzing statistical data. The knowledge is transformed into a format that lends itself to be understood by non-experts more easily. The story with links to interactive diagrams. The purpose of this design study was to improve the interaction design of the storytelling feature. The target audience for the new design was intermediate users. Evaluation of the current design by interviewing and observing beginner and intermediate users gave valuable understanding about the users goals related to the storytelling feature. The new design is a product from design goals derived from the user data and research through design. Sketching and exploring possible solutions was a process that meant producing multiple sketches, documenting design decisions through annotations and a way of keeping track of trade-offs and compromises. Screenshots from the application containing the redesigned interface of the storytelling feature was used during a final evaluation. Developers, a user and the designer evaluated the new design through a pluralistic usability walkthrough. The result showed that the new design had improved the storytelling feature in some aspects but that new problems had emerged. This indicates that interaction design processes should contain iterations. Designs should be tested, redesigned and tested again together with users and stakeholder to ensure that user goals are fulfilled, that design goals are reached and that the feature will deliver a positive user experience.

Utvecklingen av interaktiva visualiseringsverktyg har varit en produkt av de senaste årens teknologiska framsteg. Kommunikation i rörelse är ett angreppssätt som denna studie har i sin undersökning kring klyftan mellan arkitekten och beställaren i gestaltningsfasen. Syftet med studien är att analysera tillämpningen av ett interaktivt visualiseringsmedium i gestaltningsprocessen ur ett arkitektoniskt visualiseringsperspektiv. Examensarbetet ska undersöka värdet av interaktiv visualisering och identifiera hindren för dess användning. På så vis tydliggöra möjliga orsaker till varför tekniken inte används inom detta område. Utifrån studiens syfte har detta examensarbete explorativt besvarat forskningsfrågorna med hjälp av en litteraturstudie och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Studien är genomförd i samarbete med Liljewall arkitekter i Göteborg och behandlar bostadsarkitektur. Litteraturstudien visade att kombinationen av rörelse med 3D-visualisering kan stödja användarens kognitiva förståelse för gestaltningsförslaget. Detta blir fördelaktigt när arkitekten kommunicerar gestaltningen till kunden som har en begränsning att uppfatta den tredje- dimensionen ur tvådimensionella-underlag. Det framkom att interaktion var väldigt fördelaktigt när det gäller att förbättra betraktarens uppfattning kring gestaltningen. Studiens metodutformning stöttades av en konceptbild på hur ett interaktivt visualiseringsmedium skulle kunna se ut. Konceptillustrationen användes som stödmaterial under studiens semistrukturerade intervjuer vilket gav respondenterna en tydligare förståelse för visualiseringsmediumets funktionaliteter. Intervjustudien pekade på att interaktiv visualisering kan öka trovärdigheten, tilliten och förståelsen för gestaltningsförslaget vilket betraktas som kritiska faktorer under gestaltningsprocessen. Med hänsyn till den teoretiska bakgrunden och empirin kunde det konstateras att visualiseringen av de mjuka värdena kan ge en träffsäkrare kostnadskalkyl vilket är av värde för beställarens perspektiv - stödjer både förståelsen och gynnar beställarens kostnadsdriva förhållningsätt. Detta kan senare läggas till grund för att hindra ekonomiska påfrestningar i form av korrektionsarbeten. Intervjustudien visade att beställarens begränsade kunskap för verktygets kapacitet och arkitektens svårighet att kommunicera verktygets kapacitet var de stora hindren för tillämpningen av ett interaktivt visualiseringsmedium. Vidare kunde det konstateras att en tillmötesgående kultur råder bland vissa arkitekter där de vill behaga beställarens kostnadseffektiva agenda till priset av sin gestaltning. Studiens bidrag visar att interaktion inom arkitektonisk visualisering har stor potential till att överbrygga klyftan mellan arkitekten och beställaren i gestaltningsfasen. Detta utrycks då en praktisk tillämpning kan skapa möjligheten att stödja kommunikationsutmaningen mellan arkitekten och beställaren. På så vis skapas dels en utökad förståelse för gestaltningsförslaget men även mellan de involverade parterna - ett ökat värde i gestaltningsprocessen. / The development of interactive visualization tools has been a product of the technological advances of recent years. Communication in motion is an approach that this study has in its investigation of the gap between the architect and the client in the design phase.   The purpose of the study is to analyze the application of an interactive visualization medium in the design process from an architectural visualization perspective. This thesis will examine the value of interactive visualization and identify obstacles to its use, which illustrates possible reasons too why the technology is not used in this area. Based on the purpose of the study, this thesis has exploratively answered the research questions with the help of a literature study and semi-structured interviews. This master’s thesis has been written in collaboration with Liljewall Architects in Gothenburg and covers building design.   The literature study shows that the combination of movement with 3D visualization can support the users cognitive understanding of the design proposal. This is beneficial when the architect communicates the design to the customer who has difficulty perceiving the third dimension from 2D-drawings. It turned out that interactivity is very valuable when it comes to improving the viewer's perception of the design.   With regard to the theoretical background and empirical evidence, it could be stated that the visualization of the soft values could provide a more accurate cost calculation, which is of value to the customer's perspective. This can later be used as a basis for preventing financial strain in the form of corrective work. The interview shows that the client's lack of knowledge of the tool's capacity and the architect's difficulty in communicating the tool's potential create obstacles to the application of an interactive visualization tool. Furthermore, it can be stated that an accommodating culture prevails among some architects where they want to please the client's cost-effective agenda at the price of their design.   The study's contribution shows that interactivity as a phenomenon in architectural visualization has great potential for bridging the gap between the architect and the client in the design phase. A practical application could create the opportunity to support the communication challenge between the architect and the client while contributing to an increased understanding of both the design proposal and between the parties involved - a beneficial value in the design process.

Biochemistry is usually the last taught discipline of chemistry. In the Czech Republic, grammar school students study biochemistry during the third or fourth grade. This can sometimes cause problems because there is often little time left for biochemistry when compared to other chemical disciplines. The content of the biochemical curriculum is often limited only to memorization of the most important facts and there is no time enough to point out the important relationships of biochemistry to everyday life. In the last year of study, many students have already decided whether or not to study chemistry in the future and it is then difficult to find some topics that would attract the attention of those who do not want to continue studying chemistry. This thesis is focused on the solving this situation. The first part gives an overview on the theoretical background, which forms the framework for the following parts - Analysis of selected textbooks, which was done to map the current state of teaching biochemistry in Czech schools, and Creation of new didactic materials that can complement current textbooks and help teachers explain the basics of biochemistry more clearly and in the context of contemporary everyday life. The last part of this diploma thesis summarizes the experiences with use of the...

Interactive visualization is an essential tool for data analysis. Cloud-based data analysis software must handle growing data sets without relying on powerful end-user hardware. This thesis explores and tests various methods to speed up primarily time series plots of large data sets on the web for the biotechnology research company Sartorius. To increase rendering speed, I focused on two main approaches: downsampling and hardware acceleration. To find which sampling algorithms suit Sartorius's needs, I implemented multiple alternatives and compared them quantitatively and qualitatively. The results show that downsampling increases or eliminates data set size limits and that test users favored algorithms maintaining local outliers. With hardware acceleration that substantially increased the amount of simultaneously rendered points for more detailed representations, these methods pave the way for efficient visualization of large data sets on the web.

Nous proposons une approche basée sur la formulation interactive des requêtes. Notre approche sert à faciliter des tâches d’analyse et de compréhension du code source. Dans cette approche, l’analyste utilise un ensemble de filtres de base (linguistique, structurel, quantitatif, et filtre d’interactivité) pour définir des requêtes complexes. Ces requêtes sont construites à l’aide d’un processus interactif et itératif, où des filtres de base sont choisis et exécutés, et leurs résultats sont visualisés, changés et combinés en utilisant des opérateurs prédéfinis. Nous avons évalués notre approche par l’implantation des récentes contributions en détection de défauts de conception ainsi que la localisation de fonctionnalités dans le code. Nos résultats montrent que, en plus d’être générique, notre approche aide à la mise en œuvre des solutions existantes implémentées par des outils automatiques. / We propose an interactive querying approach for program analysis and comprehension tasks. In our approach, an analyst uses a set of basic filters (linguistic, structural, quantitative, and user selection) to define complex queries. These queries are built following an interactive and iterative process where basic filters are selected and executed, and their results displayed, changed, and combined using predefined operators. We evaluated our querying approach by implementing recent state-of-the-art contributions on feature location and design defect detection. Our results show that, in addition to be generic; our approach helps improving existing solutions implemented by fully-automated tools.

<div>In conventional computer graphics and visualization, images are synthesized following the planar pinhole camera (PPC) model. The PPC approximates physical imaging devices such as cameras and the human eye, which sample the scene with linear rays that originate from a single viewpoint, i.e. the pinhole. In addition, the PPC takes a snapshot of the scene, sampling it at a single instant in time, or timepoint, for each image. Images synthesized with these single viewpoint and single timepoint constraints are familiar to the user, as they emulate images captured with cameras or perceived by the human visual system. However, visualization using the PPC model suffers from the limitation of occlusion, when a region of interest (ROI) is not visible due to obstruction by other data. The conventional solution to the occlusion problem is to rely on the user to change the view interactively to gain line of sight to the scene ROIs. This approach of sequential navigation has the shortcomings of (1) inefficiency, as navigation is wasted when circumventing an occluder does not reveal an ROI, (2) inefficacy, as a moving or a transient ROI can hide or disappear before the user reaches it, or as scene understanding requires visualizing multiple distant ROIs in parallel, and (3) user confusion, as back-and-forth navigation for systematic scene exploration can hinder spatio-temporal awareness.</div><div><br></div><div>In this thesis we propose a novel paradigm for handling occlusions in visualization based on generalizing an image to incorporate samples from multiple viewpoints and multiple timepoints. The image generalization is implemented at camera model level, by removing the same timepoint restriction, and by removing the linear ray restriction, allowing for curved rays that are routed around occluders to reach distant ROIs. The paradigm offers the opportunity to greatly increase the information bandwidth of images, which we have explored in the context of both desktop and head-mounted display visualization, as needed in virtual and augmented reality applications. The challenges of multi-viewpoint multi-timepoint visualization are (1) routing the non-linear rays to find all ROIs or to reach all known ROIs, (2) making the generalized image easy to parse by enforcing spatial and temporal continuity and non-redundancy, (3) rendering the generalized images quickly as required by interactive applications, and (4) developing algorithms and user interfaces for the intuitive navigation of the compound cameras with tens of degrees of freedom. We have addressed these challenges (1) by developing a multiperspective visualization framework based on a hierarchical camera model with PPC and non-PPC leafs, (2) by routing multiple inflection point rays with direction coherence, which enforces visualization continuity, and without intersection, which enforces non-redundancy, (3) by designing our hierarchical camera model to provide closed-form projection, which enables porting generalized image rendering to the traditional and highly-efficient projection followed by rasterization pipeline implemented by graphics hardware, and (4) by devising naturalistic user interfaces based on tracked head-mounted displays that allow deploying and retracting the additional perspectives intuitively and without simulator sickness.</div>

Nous proposons une approche basée sur la formulation interactive des requêtes. Notre approche sert à faciliter des tâches d’analyse et de compréhension du code source. Dans cette approche, l’analyste utilise un ensemble de filtres de base (linguistique, structurel, quantitatif, et filtre d’interactivité) pour définir des requêtes complexes. Ces requêtes sont construites à l’aide d’un processus interactif et itératif, où des filtres de base sont choisis et exécutés, et leurs résultats sont visualisés, changés et combinés en utilisant des opérateurs prédéfinis. Nous avons évalués notre approche par l’implantation des récentes contributions en détection de défauts de conception ainsi que la localisation de fonctionnalités dans le code. Nos résultats montrent que, en plus d’être générique, notre approche aide à la mise en œuvre des solutions existantes implémentées par des outils automatiques. / We propose an interactive querying approach for program analysis and comprehension tasks. In our approach, an analyst uses a set of basic filters (linguistic, structural, quantitative, and user selection) to define complex queries. These queries are built following an interactive and iterative process where basic filters are selected and executed, and their results displayed, changed, and combined using predefined operators. We evaluated our querying approach by implementing recent state-of-the-art contributions on feature location and design defect detection. Our results show that, in addition to be generic; our approach helps improving existing solutions implemented by fully-automated tools.

Företag har i dagens samhälle stora mängder data som ökar ständigt och som därmed behöverhanteras. Företag ska kunna omvandla rådata till värdefull information som möjliggör bättrebeslutfattande. Bussiness Intelligence, även kallat BI, underlättar för företag att samla in, lagra ochanalysera sin data samt att de ger bättre underlag för beslutstöd. Ett känt verktyg som kan användassom en stödfunktion för beslutfattare är dashboard. En dashboard är en synlig presentation på en endaskärm som visar den allra viktigaste information som krävs för att kunna uppnå ett eller flera olikamål. Syftet med en dashboard är att kommunicera betydelsefull information på ett exakt, effektivtsamt tydligt sätt.Kandidatuppsatsens syfte är att identifiera och beskriva framgångsfaktorer som påverkar skapandetav en användarvänlig försäljningsdashboard utifrån ett kund–konsultperspektiv. Den metod som haranvänts i denna uppsats är fallstudiemetoden. Fem personliga intervjuer med semi-struktureradeintervjuguider som underlag har genomförts i denna studie. Intervjuerna gjordes med tre Power BIkonsulterfrån fallföretaget Two och de resterande två intervjuerna gjordes med representanter frånfallföretagets kundföretag Huzells och Pictura.De viktigaste slutsatserna från uppsatsstudien för att kunna skapa en användarvänlig försäljningsdashboard är att det är viktigt att konsulten är lyhörd och lär känna kunden, viktigt attkunden har ett tydligt syfte och mål med försäljningsdashboarden, kommunikationen mellan konsultoch kund är A och O, försäljningsdashboarden ska vara tydlig och lättförståelig, viktigt attförsäljningsdashboarden visar relevant information och nyckeltal (även kallat KPI:er) för denspecifika målgruppen och att försäljningsdashboarden ska vara behaglig att titta på.Det är viktigt att konsulten är lyhörd och lyssnar på vad kunden har för önskemål med dashboardenoch designar utifrån det. Det är också bra om konsulten lär känna kunden för att få en bättre inblick ikundens verksamhet för att kunna komma med lämpligare idéer och förslag på hur dashboarden kanutformas. Kunden behöver ha ett tydligt syfte för hur dashboarden ska se ut, vad den ska innehållasamt var den ska placeras. Kommunikation mellan båda parter är en viktig förutsättning för att de skafortsätta ha samma vision under projektet. En användarvänlig försäljningsdashboard behöver varatydlig samt innehålla relevant information och KPI:er för den specifika målgruppen.