Brianne Sherman received a Welton Sophomore Honors Summer Apprenticeship to support her summer research studying the effects of object recognition on color perception. We are excited to have Bri in the lab!
Multiple lab awards in Spring 2019
Congrats to Melissa Schoenlein, Shannon Sibrel, and Karen Schloss for receiving awards to present their research at the 2019 annual meeting of the Vision Sciences Society.
Melissa Schoenlein: McPherson Eye Research Institute Walsh Research Travel Award
Shannon Sibrel: UW-Madison Psychology Department Undergraduate Travel Award
Karen Schloss: Vision Sciences Society National Eye Institute Travel Grant
New Publication: What color are emergency exit signs? Egress behavior differs from verbal report
Our new article on people’s interpretations of exit sign colors in simulated emergencies was recently published in Applied Ergonomics.
We found that people were most likely to walk toward green signs in virtual environments during simulated emergencies. Yet, immediately after, they reported that exit signs in the building were red and that exit signs should be red. This surprising dissociation between walking behavior and verbal report emphasizes the importance of studying behavior in realistic environments.
Honorable mention for Best Paper Award at InfoVis 2018
Our paper “Mapping color to meaning in colormap data visualizations” was awarded honorable mention for Best Paper at InfoVis 2018!
In the photo: Petra Isenberg (InfoVis Paper Chair), Karen Schloss, Tim Dwyer (InfoVis Paper Chair).
Co-authors not in the photo: Connor Gramazio, A. Taylor Silverman, Madeline Parker, and Audrey Wang.
New Publication: Mapping color to meaning in colormap data visualizations
Our paper on how on how people interpret colormap data visualizations was recently published in IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) and presented at InfoVis 2018.
We found that people are better at interpreting colormaps when darker colors map to larger quantities (dark-is-more bias), regardless of the background color, when colormaps do not appear to vary in opacity. Yet, when colormaps do appear to vary in opacity there is evidence for an opaque-is-more bias. These two biases work together on light backgrounds but conflict on dark backgrounds.
New Publication: Color, Music, and Emotion: Bach to the Blues
Our new article on color-music associations for a wide variety of genres was recently published in i-Perception.
Color-music associations can be predicted from lower-level perceptual dimensions and higher-level emotional dimensions, but evidence indicates that the lower-level correspondences are mediated by shared emotional content between the colors and the music.
Information Visualization
To interpret information visualizations, people must determine how perceptual features (e.g., color, shape, size, texture) map onto concepts. This process is easier when the encoded mapping between perceptual features and concepts in visualizations matches people’s expectations. The questions is, what determines people’s expectations? Answering this question will enable the design of visualizations that are easier to interpret.
UW Virtual Brain Project™
The UW Virtual Brain Project™ is making education more engaging through virtual reality (VR). The immersive learning environments spark excitement, and improve student’s understanding of how the brain works.
To demonstrate the potential of VR-based learning, we have developed two lesson plans which can be downloaded below: The Virtual Visual System™ and Virtual Auditory System™. The lesson plans immerse people in a model of the brain based on real brain scans, allowing them to follow the path from sensory input to cortex. Information stations along the way describe key topics at each stage of neural processing.
Our perspective on VR education is that VR is a lens, analogous to a microscope or telescope, through which students experience content that would otherwise be difficult to see. We believe that the future of VR in the classroom is to provide enriched experiences that are integrated within the larger course structure, rather than supplant traditional education. Just as students do not spend entire classes with microscopes or telescopes attached to their face, they also need not to spend entire classes wearing VR headsets. VR acts as a springboard to facilitate class discussion and activities, rather than isolate students from each other and the instructor. Thus, the UW Virtual Brain Project™ lessons are brief (about 5 min.) and can be built into regular lessons on neural structure and function.
In the lab. The UW Virtual Brain Project™ team is conducting research to demonstrate the efficacy of VR-based education and to identify the aspects of VR that are especially beneficial to learning outcomes.
UW Virtual Brain Project™ team: Karen Schloss • Bas Rokers • Chris Racey • Simon Smith • Ross Treddinick • Nathaniel Miller • Melissa Schoenlein • Chris Castro
Colorgorical: An interactive color palette generating tool
How can we generate color palettes for data visualization that are easy to perceive and enjoyable to experience? We are developing Colorgorical (“Color” + “categorical”) to address this question for categorical data visualizations. Designed and evaluated using empirical data, Colorgorical helps balance aesthetics and perceptual discriminability.
Data Stories Podcast: Color with Karen Schloss
Data stories is a podcast on data visualization with Enrico Bertini and Moritz Stefaner.
This week’s episode, Color with Karen Schloss, featured a discussion on the use of color in information visualizations. Topics spanned issues in perception, color inference, and aesthetics.