O uso da infografia tem se ampliado nos veículos midiáticos, principalmente, após o processo de informatização ocorrido entre os anos 1980 e 1990. A linguagem visual esquemática utilizada em sua construção tem especificidades que ajudam a otimizar a obtenção de informação por meio de conceitos relacionados ao design da informação e a visualização da informação. Assim, para a eficácia deste processo, teoria e prática têm de estar alinhadas. O objetivo desta dissertação é investigar o quanto a teoria influencia na construção das infografias nas redações de dois grandes veículos de mídia impressa de São Paulo: os jornais Folha de São Paulo e O Estado de São Paulo. / The use of infographics has been increased in media vehicles, especially since the informatization process occured between the years 1980 and 1990. The schematic visual language applied to construct those infographics has specificities that help in obtaining information optimization trought concepts related to information design and information visualization. Thus, for the effectiveness of this process, theory and practice have to be aligned. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how much theory influences the construction of the infographics in the editorial offices of two major press media in São Paulo: Folha de São Paulo and O Estado de São Paulo.

The Internet represents a unique opportunity for people to interact with each other across time and space, and online communities have existed long before the Internet's solidification in everyday living. There are two inherent challenges that online communities continue to contend with: motivating participation and organizing information. An online community's success or failure rests on the content generated by its users. Specifically, users need to continually participate by contributing new content and organizing existing content for others to be attracted and retained. I propose both participation and organization can be enhanced if users have an explicit awareness of the implicit social network which results from their online interactions. My approach makes this normally ``hidden" social network visible and shows users that these intangible relations have an impact on satisfying their information needs and vice versa. That is, users can more readily situate their information needs within social processes, understanding that the value of information they receive and give is influenced and has influence on the mostly incidental relations they have formed with others. First, I describe how to model a social network within an online discussion forum and visualize the subsequent relationships in a way that motivates participation. Second, I show that social networks can also be modeled to generate recommendations of information items and that, through an interactive visualization, users can make direct adjustments to the model in order to improve their personal recommendations. I conclude that these modeling and visualization techniques are beneficial to online communities as their social capital is enhanced by "weaving" users more tightly together.

This thesis will introduce the concept of collaboratively using freehand gestures to interact with visualizations. It could be problematic to work with data and visualizations together with others in the traditional desktop setting because of the limited screen size and a single user input device. Therefore this thesis suggests a solution by integrating computer vision and gestures with interactive visualizations. This integration resulted in a prototype where multiple users can interact with the same visualizations simultaneously. The prototype was evaluated and tested on ten potential users. The results from the tests show that using gestures have potential to support collaboration while working with interactive visualizations. It also shows what components are needed in order to enable gestural interaction with visualizations.

The Internet represents a unique opportunity for people to interact with each other across time and space, and online communities have existed long before the Internet's solidification in everyday living. There are two inherent challenges that online communities continue to contend with: motivating participation and organizing information. An online community's success or failure rests on the content generated by its users. Specifically, users need to continually participate by contributing new content and organizing existing content for others to be attracted and retained. I propose both participation and organization can be enhanced if users have an explicit awareness of the implicit social network which results from their online interactions. My approach makes this normally ``hidden" social network visible and shows users that these intangible relations have an impact on satisfying their information needs and vice versa. That is, users can more readily situate their information needs within social processes, understanding that the value of information they receive and give is influenced and has influence on the mostly incidental relations they have formed with others. First, I describe how to model a social network within an online discussion forum and visualize the subsequent relationships in a way that motivates participation. Second, I show that social networks can also be modeled to generate recommendations of information items and that, through an interactive visualization, users can make direct adjustments to the model in order to improve their personal recommendations. I conclude that these modeling and visualization techniques are beneficial to online communities as their social capital is enhanced by "weaving" users more tightly together.

The aim for this research report is to categorize and describe students’ conceptions about the structure and function of the cell membrane from a phenomenographic and variation theory perspective. Students’ ability to understand different concepts depends on their ability to comprehend certain critical features of the content. The critical feature of understanding the structure of the cell membrane investigated here is the polar and non-polar properties of molecules. The critical feature of understanding the function of the cell membrane is transport through the cell membrane. Another aim is to investigate what animations, concerning cellular transport, can contribute to teaching and students understanding of the cell membrane. Furthermore, a subordinated aim is to distinguish whether there are any existing differences and similarities between South Africa and Sweden in consideration to students’ conceptions about the cell membrane. Two different methods of data collection, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, were used in this investigation. 80 students participated in the questionnaire and 5 students participated in the interviews. Four categories of conceptions about the characteristics of polar and non-polar molecules have been identified. Furthermore, one of the most remarkable and notable findings discovered are that most teachers and students are not aware of the current scientific view on how water molecules are transported through the cell membrane. Knowledge about aquaporines, discovered by Agre in 1992, seems to be almost non-existing in science education in upper secondary school, in Sweden and South Africa as well. Furthermore, students experience animations to be complex and which in some cases seem to be regarded as messy representation. Simultaneously they strongly emphasise the need for animations to support learning and remembering. Animations can be seen as a source of variation in teaching. The conceptions described occurred both among the South African students as well among the Swedish students. Also similarities concerning students’ conceptions have been discerned between the two countries investigated. For example there could be that South African students possess a richer understanding for the concept of the cell membrane than the Swedish students, but find it more difficult to move between different contexts.

<p>The aim for this research report is to categorize and describe students’ conceptions about the structure and function of the cell membrane from a phenomenographic and variation theory perspective. Students’ ability to understand different concepts depends on their ability to comprehend certain critical features of the content. The critical feature of understanding the structure of the cell membrane investigated here is the polar and non-polar properties of molecules. The critical feature of understanding the function of the cell membrane is transport through the cell membrane. Another aim is to investigate what animations, concerning cellular transport, can contribute to teaching and students understanding of the cell membrane. Furthermore, a subordinated aim is to distinguish whether there are any existing differences and similarities between South Africa and Sweden in consideration to students’ conceptions about the cell membrane.</p><p>Two different methods of data collection, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews, were used in this investigation. 80 students participated in the questionnaire and 5 students participated in the interviews.</p><p>Four categories of conceptions about the characteristics of polar and non-polar molecules have been identified. Furthermore, one of the most remarkable and notable findings discovered are that most teachers and students are not aware of the current scientific view on how water molecules are transported through the cell membrane. Knowledge about aquaporines, discovered by Agre in 1992, seems to be almost non-existing in science education in upper secondary school, in Sweden and South Africa as well. Furthermore, students experience animations to be complex and which in some cases seem to be regarded as messy representation. Simultaneously they strongly emphasise the need for animations to support learning and remembering. Animations can be seen as a source of variation in teaching. The conceptions described occurred both among the South African students as well among the Swedish students. Also similarities concerning students’ conceptions have been discerned between the two countries investigated. For example there could be that South African students possess a richer understanding for the concept of the cell membrane than the Swedish students, but find it more difficult to move between different contexts.</p>

The visualization of the high-dimensional feature landscapes that are encountered when analyzing audio data is a challenging problem and is the focus of much research in the field of Music Information Retrieval. Typical feature sets extracted from sound have anywhere from dozens to hundreds of dimensions and have complex interrelationships between data elements. In this work, we apply various modern techniques for the visualization of audio data to a number of diverse problem domains, including the bioacoustics of Orcinus Orca (killer whale) song, partially annotated chant traditions including Torah recitation and the the analysis of music collections and live DJ sets. We also develop a number of graphical user interfaces to allow users to interact with these visualizations. These interfaces include Flash-enabled web applications, desktop applications, and novel interfaces including the use of the Radiodrum, a three-dimension position sensing musical interface.

O uso da infografia tem se ampliado nos veículos midiáticos, principalmente, após o processo de informatização ocorrido entre os anos 1980 e 1990. A linguagem visual esquemática utilizada em sua construção tem especificidades que ajudam a otimizar a obtenção de informação por meio de conceitos relacionados ao design da informação e a visualização da informação. Assim, para a eficácia deste processo, teoria e prática têm de estar alinhadas. O objetivo desta dissertação é investigar o quanto a teoria influencia na construção das infografias nas redações de dois grandes veículos de mídia impressa de São Paulo: os jornais Folha de São Paulo e O Estado de São Paulo. / The use of infographics has been increased in media vehicles, especially since the informatization process occured between the years 1980 and 1990. The schematic visual language applied to construct those infographics has specificities that help in obtaining information optimization trought concepts related to information design and information visualization. Thus, for the effectiveness of this process, theory and practice have to be aligned. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how much theory influences the construction of the infographics in the editorial offices of two major press media in São Paulo: Folha de São Paulo and O Estado de São Paulo.

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics threatens modern healthcare on a global scale. Several actors in society, including the general public, must become more involved if this development is to be countered. The conveyance of relevant information provided through education and media reports is therefore of high concern. Antibiotic resistance evolves through the mechanisms of natural selection; in this way, a sound understanding of these mechanisms underlies explanations of causes and the development of effective risk-reduction measures. In addition to natural selection functioning as an explanatory framework to antibiotic resistance, bacterial resistance as a context seems to possess a number of qualities that make it suitable for teaching natural selection – a subject that has been proven notoriously hard to teach and learn. A recently suggested approach for learning natural selection involves so-called threshold concepts, which encompass abstract and integrative ideas. The threshold concepts associated with natural selection include, among others, the notions of randomness as well as vast spatial and temporal scales. Illustrating complex relationships between concepts on different levels of organization is one, of several, areas where visualizations are efficient. Given the often-imperceptible nature of threshold concepts as well as the fact that natural selection processes occur on different organizational levels, visual accounts of natural selection have many potential benefits for learning. Against this background, the present dissertation explores information conveyed to the public regarding antibiotic resistance and natural selection, as well as investigates how these topics are presented together, by scrutinizing media including news reports, websites, educational textbooks and online videos. The principal method employed in the media studies was content analysis, which was complemented with various other analytical procedures. Moreover, a classroom study was performed, in which novice pupils worked with a series of animations explaining the evolution of antibiotic resistance. Data from individual written assignments, group questions and video-recorded discussions were collected and analyzed to empirically explore the potential of antibiotic resistance as a context for learning about evolution through natural selection. Among the findings are that certain information, that is crucial for the public to know, about antibiotic resistance was conveyed to a low extent through wide-reaching news reporting. Moreover, explanations based on natural selection were rarely included in accounts of antibiotic resistance in any of the examined media. Thus, it is highly likely that a large proportion of the population is never exposed to explanations for resistance development during education or through newspapers. Furthermore, the few examples that were encountered in newspapers or textbooks were hardly ever visualized, but presented only in textual form. With regard to videos purporting to explain natural selection, it was found that a majority lacked accounts of central key concepts. Additionally, explanations of how variation originates on the DNA-level were especially scarce. These and other findings coming from the content analyses are discussed through the lens of scientific literacy and could be used to inform and strengthen teaching and scientific curricula with regards to both antibiotic resistance and evolution. Furthermore, several factors of interest for using antibiotic resistance in the teaching of evolution were identified from the classroom study. These involve, among others, how learners’ perception of threshold concepts such as randomness and levels of organization in space and time are affected by the bacterial context

User studies play a vital role in data visualization research because they help measure the strengths and weaknesses of different visualization techniques quantitatively. In addition, they provide insight into what makes one technique more effective than another; and they are used to validate research contributions in the field of information visualization. For example, a new algorithm, visual encoding, or interaction technique is not considered a contribution unless it has been validated to be better than the state of the art and its competing alternatives or has been validated to be useful to intended users. However, conducting user studies is challenging, time consuming, and expensive. User studies generally requires careful experimental designs, iterative refinement, recruitment of study participants, careful management of participants during the run of the studies, accurately collecting user responses, and expertise in statistical analysis of study results. There are several variables that are taken into consideration which can impact user study outcome if not carefully managed. Hence the process of conducting user studies successfully can take several weeks to months. In this dissertation, we investigated how to design an online framework that can reduce the overhead involved in conducting controlled user studies involving web-based visualizations. Our main goal in this research was to lower the overhead of evaluating data visualizations quantitatively through user studies. To this end, we leveraged current research opportunities to provide a framework design that reduces the overhead involved in designing and running controlled user studies of data visualizations. Specifically, we explored the design and implementation of an open-source framework and an online service (VisUnit) that allows visualization designers to easily configure user studies for their web-based data visualizations, deploy user studies online, collect user responses, and analyze incoming results automatically. This allows evaluations to be done more easily, cheaply, and frequently to rapidly test hypotheses about visualization designs. We evaluated the effectiveness of our framework (VisUnit) by showing that it can be used to replicate 84% of 101 controlled user studies published in IEEE Information Visualization conferences between 1995 and 2015. We evaluated the efficiency of VisUnit by showing that graduate students can use it to design sample user studies in less than an hour. Our contributions are two-fold: first, we contribute a flexible design and implementation that facilitates the creation of a wide range of user studies with limited effort; second, we provide an evaluation of our design that shows that it can be used to replicate a wide range of user studies, can be used to reduce the time evaluators spend on user studies, and can be used to support new research.